


Vignettes

by LePetitChouNerd



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: 69, Angst, Breaking Up & Making Up, Experimental Style, F/M, Long-Distance Relationship, Making Love, Quiet moments in a relationship, Sexual Content, Somewhat, angsty, porn without a plot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-06-24
Packaged: 2018-10-16 06:55:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 23,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10565979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LePetitChouNerd/pseuds/LePetitChouNerd
Summary: What Sara and Reyes had wasn't quite love. It was something else together. Often passionate, sometimes bitter; always touching, but never quite together. These are vignettes on the meaning of their short lived love affair.





	1. Sweet Nothings

The little shack tucked away in hills miles away from the slums was more than Sara expected. The sunset dimmed against the jagged peaks walling them off from the rest of Kadara, and the waning light toyed with the shadows looming through the rather empty room. She tried to set sights around her, the ceiling, the somewhat droning fan as it spiraled above them, and the shades of gold and orange jutting defiantly through the shutters. Her hair fell in lilac lines across her face, cutting through her vision as sweat beaded through the strands. The steadfast rhythm of the bed welled out in slow, gentle creaks. Every beat or so, she would close her tired eyes in an effort to cling to hitched breathing, struggling to keep time.

She felt his nose, the ridges of his brow, and the infrequent brush of his lips in the hollow of her neck. Their limbs were tangled every which way, locked as they slowly lost themselves to the gentle hum of a light bulb across the room or to the playful tendrils of receding sunlight. Sara was reduced to sensations, and she didn’t quite mind it. In fact, she quite liked the simplicity of it all, of a glowing warmth where their skin touched, and of the slight ache that came with every push and pull - tantalizing in its own lulling way.

The springs of the mattress churned more jagged protests against their swelling pace. Reyes, who was otherwise histrionic in all he touched, gently felt for the curves of her hips, grasping and cupping, and slowly wading his way as he buried his eyes into her chest, a lightless void where he saw nothing but could taste everything. There was no rush, after all. It was enough for him to simply melt into her, and it was enough for him to simply nibble on the edges of her collarbone, and to hear sweet nothings that would flit away from her lips - no doubt incidental for the otherwise controlled Pathfinder.

It seemed strange, Sara thought, to be so naked with someone else. Though she passed through six hundred years in sleep, the long untouched nerves beneath layers of muscle and skin jolted in fevered excitement. Every brush of hair and flesh tingled anew and strange. She thought of how he moved with her, _inside_ of her, and through her. She thought that even though he lay atop, pressing her against the otherwise firm cushion of the mattress, she still felt the fleeting thrill of falling, and of the dire need to hold onto him tighter, lest he let go. And as if to plead, to bargain with _him_ for an endlessness to this moment, she grazed her lips against his earlobe, crossing over to the shorter strands of hair bordering his temple. He tasted a bit of _dirt_ , a bit of metal, and a bit of honeyed sweat. She kissed him then and there, savoring what she could in exchange for more of what couldn’t possibly go on any longer.

Reyes seemed to have said her name, to have uttered it in the crooks of her bones. She couldn’t tell. He sounded muffled, lost in her chest, arms firmly over her waist, and his thighs holding her weight, almost lifting her for a more frenzied embrace. He too felt like he was falling, and he wasn’t about to let go. At least, not when he felt so close to her, to have been so locked into her.

_I love you_ , she wanted to say, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to say it. Instead Sara bit into her own mouth, to chew against the sounds welling in her throat. _I love you, I love you_ . He seemed to read each repressed utterance with the way she arched her back and tensed her shoulders. Her eyes shut tight, wrinkling the bridge of her nose as her brows quirked in frustration. _I love you_ , she wanted to say, but she exchanged sincerity for more of him. Her lover, fluent in the signs of her body, read without reluctance. His lips moved to her mouth and silenced whatever words fought for escape. There, she sang her moans as he abandoned all restraint and pushed deeper. The metal bedpost rattled with him, and soon Sara found it impossible to drown out the song reeling through her.

_I love you_ , but it was a mere whisper against the drone of a whirring ceiling fan and the harsh breaths of a lover, exhausted and lost in his sweet repose.

 

* * *

 

Reyes had a bad habit of twirling his fingers into her hair. Lost in the dark, he held her almost-sleeping form, knotting her light blue locks until it coiled to the black roots digging into her scalp. He relished the smell of it. A somewhat sterilized, unscented trace of shampoo with inexplicable hints of what Sara herself smelled of - something sweet no doubt, but he couldn’t pinpoint the word at that moment - was left in each loose tress of hair.

_I was a little predictable as a kid_.

Sara placed a leg over his, locking and crisscrossing as they huddled together in bed.

_My parents treated us very equally, actually. You could tell my dad expected more from Scott, but in the end they did their best for both of us. It was … perfectly normal._

He buried his mouth into the crown of her head, listening to her story with listless and empty eyes.

_But I… I didn’t feel… right, being equal with Scott. Everything he got, I got. One and the same. Always the same. We were never our own person_.

Just a moment ago, her hand lay flat on his chest, but each recalled word curled each knuckle of her fingers. Clutching more than caressing, Sara tried harder to hold onto Reyes in their dreamlike, postcoital rambling.

_Cliché, right? Like every twin sob story. I colored my hair some tacky blue, ‘cause I didn’t feel like being part of a matched set anymore._ A little itched gnawed at her throat, prompting her to pause.

Reyes caught the sudden silence of the room. Still, he focused on the twirling of her hair - that same “tacky” colored hair - unable to see its unique shade of blue in the darkness of the room. He could feel instead the rather silky knots pooling around his finger. His other hand fell to her jawline, soft and overturned to face him in the dark.

_My dad’s dead now. Scott’s still in coma. Now I’m a somebody. I’m my own person now…_ Her words drifted, not really daring to finish the moral of the fable that happened upon them so soon after making love. So instead she let out a sigh and rested her head against the nape of his neck. Her fingers clutched tighter at the curls of his chest, feeling for him in the way their bodies molded into each other.

Reyes, finished with his role as attentive listener, rolled onto his side. He blindly faced her, seeing nothing save for the faded outline of her face.

“You are always someone, Sara.” His words resounded loudly, almost in complete replication of the very gift of _her_ words to him. “None of that is your fault.”

She wanted forgiveness of some kind, and instead he gave her something else. A new start perhaps? Sara didn’t bother debating it further in her mind. It was good enough to hold onto him, to her lover, and to relish the silence only _they_ could share in the privacy of such a fleeting moment. Just minutes before, she suppressed every and any urge to give him her love. Even then, Reyes found a way to steal those words, to give them to her - new and already familiar. She was someone and no one to Reyes: a person who didn’t have to _be_. She could float and sink into him, into his body, and dream peacefully as he curled her hair. It was an impulse of his that she always entertained, and one she was sure he would never let go.


	2. "Who are you?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: 69. Graphic detail. Yeah... I am so sorry. I must emphasize the explicit rating of this fic.

Reyes always faced the same persistent question, but never had he encountered such a persistent person  _ asking  _ it. 

“Who  _ are  _ you?” Sara rolled over him. Her belly flattened over his navel as she couched her knotted hair over the ridges of his upper ribs. A devious smile, reaching to the dimples of her very soft, very round face.

He was still a little bit sleepy, a little bit worn down. Not a wink of rest for either of them, but the Pathfinder didn’t seem to care much. He raked his fingers through her hair, a little too tired to pull her up closer. “Careful,” he warned. A smile followed the murmur, and the warning seemed less what it was and more a helpless provocation. “Careful what you wish for.”

She chuckled at that. The pleasant quake of her tummy pushed against his bones, but he didn’t mind it so. It never occurred to her (though it did to him) that asking such questions in bed with a stranger was not a very good way to get to know him. Still, it was forgivable. Even if she had no idea what she was getting herself into, he could forgive her for trying.

“Try me.” She stayed giggling over him. The lithe movements of her weight seemed to lull him even more into gentle, unwanted sleep. 

“Alright.” Reyes let out a sigh, his eyes wandering over to the ceiling fan above them. It seemed to have slowed, or at least lost momentum. Not a light shone in their little corner of the world, and the darkness proved comfortable in the end. “What do you want to know?” The hand that once wandered into the coils of her hair drifted lower, down to the base of her skull - roots of her hair veining beneath her skin - to the line parting her back.

“Were you always a smuggler?”

It did not surprise him that she would start with  _ that _ . Of course, he always knew of her doe-eyed tendency to see the good in people, even if it meant not knowing just how intrinsic their faults are; even if it meant acknowledging that his penchant for hiding, for concealing, but never truly lying, was all part and parcel of who he was.

“No, I was a pilot once. A shuttle pilot.” His lips straightened to a slight grimace. Neither happy nor ashamed of it, like a trifling detail of his life that proved tedious to dig up. He looked down at her from where she lay, her cheekbones still protruding against his waist. The faint outline of her eyes - glossy even in the shadows - showed with her piqued curiosity.

“Who did you work for?”

_ Whom _ , Reyes thought, but that was an elementary thing to point out. He instead got to the heart of the matter. “Anyone and everyone. The Citadel was a big place after all.”

He could feel her ears perk up at the slightest mention. “Citadel?!” Sara raised herself on her elbows. Her upturned legs playfully dangled in the air. “We … actually lived in the same place. This entire time.”

Reyes found the sentiment amusing. “Maybe,” he added, charming as the hope was. “Though I doubt we ever crossed paths.”

A wordless part of her lips told him that Sara wanted to protest such an assumption, but she stopped short of ever actually expressing it. Instead, she contented herself to the silence of a listener. Waiting. Feeling and seeing for the contours of what he wasn’t saying.

“When I was a boy, my father once took me to the Silversun Strip. He worked there as a dock manager. You could say handling goods and delivering them ran in our blood.”

Reyes paused to smile at the memory. A lonely boy led by the hand of his father, overwhelmed by bright lights of things moving fast, of places and their sounds melding together. The faint sound of slot machines in an ocean of casinos calling over with their MIDI siren song still echoed in his ears. The vaguely sultry look of an escort paying heed to the drivel of small men wearing big shoes filled the gaps of an otherwise already clustered picture. He could almost remember the awe he once felt.

“I thought I wanted to be those people. I wanted the fancy suit. The endless credits. The wine. The men, women…” [He could feel her wince. The scrunching of her nose, the wrinkling of her forehead, at the thought that she could potentially be one of those things.] Another piece fell into the pastiche, and he found himself remembering the veiled ridicule of a distant lover. Memories of an individual or two sharing his dream of apartment suites overlooking vast swaths of the mired gem of the city. Their laughter - not too kind, but never unkind - echoed in his head. He thought of the yearning look that always found its way each time he made rounds around the Strip. 

Sara reached up to him again. Her hands drew blindly into the dark. She climbed up from her soft spot on his stomach, over to the width of his shoulders. The frame of his body suddenly seemed rough, rugged to hold on to. “Is that what you’ve always wanted?” She couldn’t hide an ounce of her disappointment.

_ Sara _ , he breathed. He almost shook his head in delight of her naivety. It was almost as if she didn’t heed his warning. “Do you want to know what I like about smuggling?” The question held her in air. There, in the dark, the bed shook from the commotion as he turned her over. One swift maneuver, and suddenly he was above her. Towering, hovering. She could barely squirm in surprise.

The shift left her breathless. “What?” She took the bait. Leaving her lips parted for a kiss, deep and yet frustratingly brief as he withdrew within a moment’s notice. He left her almost whimpering. A pout accompanied by a muted sigh left her falling so helplessly into the softness of the bed. The flattened pillow beneath them took in the impressions of her form.

“There’s nothing better,” and he took a delectable pause as he pressed his nose against her chest, “than holding something precious…” He whispered a kiss on the curve of a breast, trailing down to the firm base of her abdomen. 

Sara recoiled in response. The feel of his mouth, his nose breathing her in, carried with the act an exhilaration that woke otherwise slumbering limbs. She wove her thighs together in aching satisfaction. 

“...Holding something sweet…” His hand dithered down her middle, past her bellybutton, to the roughened curls diving deep between her thighs. 

She gasped at his touch - electrifying and warm all the same. The slight motions of his hand persisted against her thighs, crossing and barring him in the very instance her eyes beckoned in the dark. The plea didn’t go unnoticed.

“...Something loved…” The murmur waned into a low growl as he watched her the lines of her shadow. The lightless arching of her back and the swaying of her hips were both attentive to his gentle rhythm. She bit her lip in suppression of a moan. Jagged breaths and the defiant grasp of her hands coaxed his wrists deeper (and a little faster). Her little ministrations sang of the pained desire pulsing through her.

Beneath the flickering light of an unpowered ceiling fan, the dim light  toyed with the contours of his face. Reyes relished the thought of guiding his listener to a more fruitful conclusion for his story. “Nothing is better than holding that…” Two fingers emerged from inside her to pay close attention to her neglected clit. Close to her temple. his mouth traveled up to the lobe of her ear. Nibbling in the same breath he finishes, “...All to yourself.” Wet. Soft. Begging for his warmth. He pinched just a little before circling his thumb into her middle. The widened part of her thighs told of her newfound taste for his tale. 

“Are you happy with my story, Sara?” 

The bed creaked again, ready to take up the tune of bones rattling against the springs of their mattress. Sara, for her part, didn’t respond. She couldn’t. She could only nibble her lip in ascent, or shake her head in misread disbelief that he could so easily evade her interrogations.  _ Fuck _ . Her mind dove for the one word that could best convey the elated feeling of drowning and breathing all at once. “I want you,” she cried with a soft mewl.

And though it was  _ his  _ story, his turn to weave a tantalizing tale in place of any honesty, she mustered the courage to take over. Before he could withdraw a hand, Sara rose to her knees and quickly ambled about the screeching protests of their bed. Her head traded places with her legs, and soon she found herself embracing his thighs, trailing her mouth against his groin. Warm and inviting. Her feet kicked against the airless pillow as she felt his grizzled cheek brush against her inner thigh. Limbs wrapped around him, grazing against the stubble beneath and on the side of his neck.

Unlike her lover, Sara made no equivocations. She took him in his mouth. Firm, swollen, she relished nothing save the taste of his sweat. Reyes, on the other hand, followed her brazen lead. He too swam into her depths, drinking and savoring her ripened folds.  _ Like honey _ , he wanted to say. But not quite. They lay there on opposite ends, coiling into each other as Sara buckled her hips to the lapping of his mouth, and as he pushed  the bones of his hips against her jaw.

_ Be careful what you wish for _ , were the words that began his story. Now, near the conclusion of his past, Reyes found himself savoring her persistence. The question was never really lost, but it lay buried in her thighs where he kissed and lapped, hungry than he thought he was for what he could never have. And Sara - always eager to please, to want, and to have - drank him in, sucking past the tip of his erection. She wanted the impossible of swallowing him whole. Jagged rhythms. Shortened breaths. A sharp cry here and there echoed, and suddenly the bed was noisier than before.

_ Sara…  _ He was much closer than she was. Hot and hardening in her mouth, Sara closed her eyes when she felt heat spear through him. Reyes jutted into her throat for one last push, and a radiating warmth seemed to seep atop her tongue.

He was the first to let go of her hips, to recline in self-satisfaction as he sank lower into the mattress. The ceiling fan whirred on as Sara, more awake than sleepy, licked up the last of his seed. The story, after all, left her quite unsated. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave some feedback so I can improve this story. Do you guys have any particular idea as to the direction of the story? As of now I am just writing down my daydreams of this couple. :3 Or as always, you can always drop by to say hi. Thank you again!


	3. (Sara) Around Others Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sara takes Scott for a little family vacation time on Voeld. They find out hard truths about each other.
> 
> Part 1 revolves around Sara's relationships with other people  
> Part 2 revolves around Reyes's relationships with other people

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: SPOILERS FOR THE RYDER FAMILY AND MEMORIES QUEST!!! It's not blatantly revealed, but the end result is implied.
> 
> If you are curious as to what Sarianna and Scott look like, feel free to visit my blog here: http://lepetitchoucommie.tumblr.com/SaraRyder

Sara never held Scott at arm’s length, but she didn’t feel like bombarding him with revelation after revelation either. For now, she settled for what she knew best: how to hold his hand and guide him through whatever hardships came their way. Sometimes that meant pulling through, toughening up against news of a terminal illness or the rather frightening prospect of filling in for dad when it mattered most. Other times, it meant taking Scott somewhere safe, but not exactly warm. In fact, she was thinking more thirty-degrees-below-zero kinds of “not warm.”

“Ha! This is awesome!” Scott’s voice echoed through the vasts tundra of Voeld before he dove into the herculean hill of snow before them with reckless abandon. For the first time since he woke up, he was smiling ear-to-ear, basking against the now soft, imminently melting sea of ice around them.

Sara trailed behind with her own suppressed chuckles. “Careful now. Wouldn’t want to lose my brother to  _ another  _ coma.” Her arms crossed in feigned disapproval - a habit she took up from her mother whenever they dared to venture beyond their father’s safety rules. A slight though not unhappy frown weighed down the corner of her mouth.

“Sounds like a dare!” Scott called up from above in a somewhat pointless warning for descent. Arms raised up in the air, he dove from the incline before sliding down with his armored stomach drifting through the snow. His sister could hear the slight blast of his jetpack propelling his way downward. 

_ Sara, I assure you the risk of Scott suffering another injury is minimal _ . SAM offered his reassurance through Sara’s “private channel” (which she is almost always tempted to just call her “mind,” but that would provoke some kind of debate on semantics with her AI. It wasn’t the sort of the mind game she considered fun). Within seconds, Scott skidded towards Sara’s feet, coming mere inches away from the pointy end of her boots.

“Well, that was fun.” He followed his blithe remark with a heavy pant - breathless mostly from the thrill than the work. It took him a few more seconds before he sat himself up and slid off his helmet. The biting cold filled his lungs with its own quiet high. Not as much oxygen as back on Earth, but it satisfied nonetheless. Next to him, Sara plopped herself down, couched in the snow. They both sat back, hands pitched to the icy ground for support, and breathed in the cerulean endlessness of the planet’s horizon. Jagged peaks formed like bluish bulwarks veining beneath the sky, and somewhere in the distance, the twins could hear the siren’s song of the Yevara floating in the timeless void of Voeld’s oceans. 

The almost picaresque calm prompted a memory, one Sara hadn’t allowed herself to remember in a long time. “Remember when we were little, and dad would take us to Vermont during school breaks?” 

A grin crept on Scott’s lips as a somewhat sentimental tone swept over his words. “Yeah,” he could almost sigh the yearning muted through a luxurious memory. According to everyone else on the Nexus, he had missed most of the suffering, the pain, and the failure. It was the sort of “luck” that refused him such quiet moments, or even reveries, in longing for where he could not go. “Dad used to wake us up  _ so damn early _ .”

“Yeah those 4 AM wake up calls were… not pleasant.” Sara too chuckled at the memory of blankets being whipped up from above them and the glaring light of their father’s flashlights flooding their eyes into a panicked and waking state.

“Not pleasant?! He used to threaten to take us there  _ just  _ in pajamas if we weren’t ready in time!” Scott’s shoulders shook in a rather confused gesture halfway through bewildered and halfway through bemused. And at the end of their shared laughter, he could feel a tug at his throat; an itch that stood for a grief he never really registered, much less allowed.

Sara pressed her weight on her hands, stretching her arms backwards as she straightened her legs. The chilly breeze gave way to a playfulness in the way her hands - armored and plated - crunched through the snow. They grounded deeper until something of a frigid lifelessness seized her wrists. “It was worth it, I think.” A bittersweet smile? A nostalgic one? Perhaps a pensive one, if she had to pick a word. “Of all the things dad did, I could forgive him for that sunrise.”

Scott knew precisely what she meant. He could almost picture the mere traces of the vermillion hues and wisps of pink lining the raiment of fading stars against the horizon. Instead of the rather evened snowcapped valley of Voeld, he found a range of peaks jutting through sheets of white. Coniferous pine would give the tundra its sleepy, muted green - almost black against the dawn. A memory of two children - a brother and sister - holding hands so neither would fall framed the dreamlike vision. And next to them, a taller man, reserved and aged, looked out into the distance as bluish night gave way to the fanning embers of a rising sun. Funny, he thought, how one could marvel at the sights belonging exclusively to Andromeda, but he never quite relished how life thrived in its own way back home. The memory made a tableau out of Vermont for Scott, which seemed just moments before as some mundane plot of land on Earth. Yet now it was a little more magnificent, especially when, all things considered, he’d probably never see pine again, nor the reclusive cabin tucked away in its Edenic valleys.

It was almost as if Sara could read his mind with the way she shot him a glance lined with concern. But like most things his sister did, it came with a doting smile. “You know, it’s nice to see you this way again.” A certain sadness lingered in the way her voice couldn’t even reach an echo. Muted, and confession like, Sara felt herself more and more buried in the cold. “I just mean… Even before we left the Milky Way, it had just been a long time.” She couldn’t quite set it to words, but she aimed for something along the lines of  _ feeling like a kid again _ . 

Scott too donned a sheepish smile, as if he was embarrassed by the long ago repressed pain of losing a limb - much less a twin. “Things were pretty rough. After you left for college. Dad was never the same, really.”

Somehow the hint of sympathy layered over his words offended Sara. “What do you mean?”

Scott shrugged, waffling around something he couldn’t quite pinpoint either. “It wasn’t right away. I don’t think he knew how much he missed you right away, but Sara, he just started to…  _ not  _ do things.” The furrows on her brow told her brother that she remained unconvinced, so he pressed on. “You know those early morning drills? Ten miles first thing. Fifty pull ups. Don’t forget leg day. Target practice. Well, they all started to drop. One by one.”

_ Good _ , she wanted to say. Sara wasn’t about to bring up the fact that Scott  _ never  _ liked doing any of those anyway. Still, she kept a tight lipped silence.

“I think he knew by then that you were the only one keeping us on our toes.” Of course, he would try to ameliorate the rather heavy air around them with a joke.

“We never really were kids,” she continued. “Not to him. We were just vehicles for whatever agenda he had.” Her fists curled from beneath the snow. Tightening, and coiling, heat started to rush through her fingers. “Or… or…” It was strange how easily her mind left her voice, alone with words that didn’t really make sense.

Scott motions to say something. His mouth hung half-open in need to console his sister, but words left him too. A cloudless sky gave way to an even paler sun. Small, luminous, almost too bright for a moon yet too dim to be a blazing red giant. Even if he couldn’t finish her sentence for her, he at least understood what and why Voeld proved poignant for a pair of twins to cope with some sort of loss. And sometimes, having someone  _ there  _ to wallow regardless was just as good.

“When dad died, I thought I saw it in his eyes.” She made sure to fix her gaze on the snow. The blank space of the ground narrowed in on long gone sounds. “He looked so afraid. I’ve never seen him so afraid.” She tried to remember  _ his  _ words, but the mere echo of a familiar voice reverberating against the ringing of white noise was all she could muster. Just that pained, fearful look. “‘I’m sorry,’ he seemed to say. ‘I love you.’ I thought maybe, after all these years, he would just get it all off of his stupid chest.” Though her voice was low, it quivered against the cold creeping through her fingers. She hugged her knees to her chest, pressing close for warmth atop the frozen sea. Her brother followed the harangue with his own observant silence.

Sara wasn’t quite sure why she chose  _ now  _ \- the moment of their supposed reprieve and responsibility-free fun - to recklessly divulge. Her arms drew tighter around her knees. “I’m sorry,” she spoke with callous detachment. “I brought you here for  _ fun  _ not therapy hour…”

“Don’t do that Sara.” Her brother’s remonstrance sounded meek, almost muted in comparison. The two looked askance at each other. Never really one for butting heads, Sara was a little more than shocked ( _ jolted  _ even) to hear it. “You always do that,” Scott continued. “You do things like this -!” He flailed his arms out in the open in gesture of the arctic expanse surrounding them. “You say it’s for me. You say you want to take care of me, and to let me have fun…” He turns towards her just before diving for the punch, “And I  _ believe  _ you. I  _ do _ !”

“But?” She raised a skeptical brow in response. 

Scott heaved a sigh of frustration. He wasn’t quite sure why his otherwise brilliant and logical sister failed to connect the dots. “But what you just did, reaching out to me and telling me how dad really hurt you, that’s okay too.” His sentence ended with a rather melancholic tune to his words. Another bout of silence irrupted, and the twins seemed literally frozen to the static air forming around them. For her part, Sara could only fix her gaze elsewhere, to concentrate on some distant mountain before she could even  _ begin  _ to tackle the weight of her brother’s words.

“When we were growing up…” Scott took up the thread once more, but it was a mere utterance this time, a murmur lost as he exhaled and dove backwards into the snow. His arms and legs sprawled, he looked ready to sink in. “...You always said you’d protect me, or that you’d make sure dad didn’t stop me from doing what I wanted.”

_ True enough _ , Sara thought with a smile. 

Scott pivoted his neck to peer up at her. “What about you? Did you ever get to do what you want?” The question hung back in knots at the back of his throat. From where he lay, he could see her blank expression with her rather confused nose scrunched up from the difficulty of even grasping the sudden escalation of memories and the small epiphanies they carry. He knew from day one that Sara had too much pride, a trait ironically inherited from her most despised family member. And none of that pride could even mold her into anything but a resentful child, or a daughter left to wallow in the shade of her much loved brother. It didn’t surprise Scott that, in the end, not even their father’s death could exorcise the repressive demon of his sister’s stubbornness. “You’re right, dad  _ was  _ stupid, but what you saw when he died was real too.”

Sara huddled closer to her knees. A little warmth started to wave through her. A small spark, burning at the end of a short wick. “How do you know?” The inevitable question. People who weren’t there  _ couldn’t _ know. How could Scott  _ possibly  _ know?

“I… I just do.”  _ Pathetic _ , Scott thought. But it was the most honest he can be, and it seemed to him that Sara needed that more than any plausible explanation. He was ready for it all; a heavy handed riposte with her signature  _ ‘Um actually _ ,’ or the infamous eye roll in case verbal sarcasm didn’t quite fit; or even the emotively insistent I’m-right-you’re-wrong sort of extremes. Yet none manifested. Scott sat up to face his sister once more, ready to defend his argument, however unargued. “True. Dad made you a Pathfinder to protect mom, but do you think he would’ve even considered passing SAM onto you if he didn’t ever believe in you? Even for mom’s sake?”

She scoffed, wholly unsure of her brother’s newfound faith in their absent and now deceased father. It wasn’t up for debate, so she wasn’t about to humor Scott just to bury still lingering wrongs.

“SAM showed me the memory.”

A sharp wind cut through her breath. Stricken lungs could not veil her surprise. “What?!”

“I asked SAM. He showed me.” The syllogistic simplicity had a defiance towards it. Scott never knew he had such inclinations when it came to disproving his sister’s willfulness.

Sara got up. Flakes of snow fell in cascades around her. Her short frame briefly towered over him while he remained pitched to the ground. “You know Scott, that’s exactly the kind of bullshit you don’t  _ need  _ to be pulling.”

Provoked, Scott mimicked his sister and leveled eyes. “I watched you almost  _ die _ !”

“Exactly! There was  _ no  _ need for that.”

“I’m just saying Sara, dad was a fuck up. Yes. He fucked up!” A howling wind seemed to drown out the echo of Scott’s voice. His thinly suppressed rage could hardly compete. “But he loved you. He always did.” His sister turned away. She couldn’t quite handle the contortions of his anger, neither could she stomach the biting sting of truth flailed at her in words. “I know he sucked at showing it, but he didn’t hesitate. He did exactly what I would’ve done. What anyone who’s ever cared about you would’ve done!”

“Okay I get it!” Her voice broke the wall of his. The shouting match was amplified by the sheer distance around them. Suddenly, Voeld felt colder. The emptiness of the tundra made a smallness out of her bones, out of the very meaninglessness of the rather spontaneous, rather arbitrary fight they were having.

But Scott knew she didn’t quite “get it.” Resentment still clearly blighted her, from the symptoms of her tightly clenched jaw and fumblings with precise words for more precise arguments. For the first time in their lives, she was keeping him at arm’s length, and he wasn’t about to let her push him away. Not when they were light years gone from all that they knew.

“You wanted to take me out here so I could be a kid again, right?” He circled around to make her face him. “Listen, Sara, thanks to you, I’ve always known what it was like. To be happy, to  _ not  _ care, to break the rules and not get shit for any of ‘em.” He placed his hands gently on her shoulders, realizing how his twin - his equal by every measure - was actually a very small, very vulnerable woman. It crushed him to see her strength so dwindled. “But you can’t be that, right? You took dad with you wherever you went, even after he died.” Scott paused to make sure he could see her eyes. The same glossy hue, faint in its colorlessness. Yet hers shook, watery, and stubborn even before the face of help. “He loved you Sara, and he was sorry. He was sorry when he stopped doing drills, because he missed you. He knew they weren’t the same without you-...” Sara cut him short with a sudden embrace, almost a tackle. The force of her armor rattled his bones, but Scott wasn’t about to complain. “He wanted to say sorry the entire time you were gone; whenever you came home for breaks; or when…” A chuckle seized his words the moment he remembered it. “... Or when you brought home some idiot  _ just  _ to piss him off.”

Sara’s shoulders shook in his arms, but the staccato jumble of sounds emanating from her throat resembled more of her barely-suppressed giggles. No doubt, she found something amusing in the recollection too.

“You’re both so stubborn.” He declared it so softly. Sara almost missed the parsed through truth of his anecdotes. She broke the embrace to wipe dry her eyes and, for once, look up at her brother within arm’s length. With a smile, he finished his sentiment. “You are so like him, Sara. The best of him, and some of the bad parts too.” The joke carried over more than the honesty behind it, and it warmed their hearts to have been so consistently laughing and tearing up amid blistering winds. “He would have been so proud.”

 

* * *

 

Subject: RE: Checking in

To: Reyes Vidal

From: Sara Ryder

I’m surprised you even remember where I went and with whom. I had a nice time with Scott, thanks for asking :] He said a lot of things that I think I really needed to hear. It’s hard to explain over email.

I can tell you more if you manage to scrape up some free time. Word’s getting around that Kadara Port is expanding. My frozen ass is very proud of you, all the way here in Voeld. I’ll be in Havarl next. Some of the Angaran scientists needed me (well they need SAM) to dig up stuff. You should take a break from being Big Boss and visit me. It’s been a while, and I miss you.

-Sara

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No Sara and Reyes this time around (so no porn for the couple either). Instead you get NICE character development (YAY!!!!!). I was inspired to do this thanks to a helpful suggestion from a very helpful friend.


	4. (Reyes) Around Others Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reyes does some housekeeping.

Chalk it up to antiquated vids to romanticize the nuts and bolts of organized crime. In reality, things were as exciting as watching lead paint dry on the sunbaked metal bones of Kadara Port. Sure enough, both grey and black markets filled his coffers. Reports caught in the wind or circulated in terminal message boards pronounced him loved. Keema had already confirmed what the undercover smuggler knew: _vox populi, vox Reyes_ . And although he knew that _being someone_ (re: being a big shot) had its fair share of responsibilities, he didn’t quite anticipate such responsibilities to be _so,_ what’s the word? _Boring_. The voice of people proved neither uproarious nor uplifting. It was more akin to an unhappy marriage, but rather than reduce the qualms and bitterness to microcosmic days with an individual, the grievances ran aground for thousands.

Sitting casually in his lounge, Reyes awaited reports, not intended for him of course. He knew better than to leave a “paper” trail, so capable hackers did the next best thing: siphon the exhilarating dossiers tracking and accounting for arms, drugs (or medicine, for Sara’s preferred euphemism), food, pornography, and whatever have you to him. The seediness of it used to make even small time smuggling its own thrill. Now wholly sanitized of the risks, however, it proved no less tedious than the paperwork of more “dignified” professions _._ The mere thought of reading induced a mildly noticeable headache. Nagging him like a fly, the only cure was the bottle of whiskey keeping him company on the table in front of him. Kian’s server now knew better than to leave him a glass.

His omnitool pinged him with precisely what he dreaded, and, like any good businessman, Reyes obliged with a prompt read.

_To: Christmas Tate_

_From: Ronan Jonson_

_Coroner not done. Hypothesis? People know a shivving when they see it._

Grim? Maybe. Some sort of lead? Definitely. He forwarded the email to Lynx with instructions postscript: “Keep tabs on this one.” A potential homicide on Sara’s turf didn’t bode well, and the last thing he wanted was the entire Ninth Circle of Nexus Hell scapegoating her for frontier-esque outpost of Ditaeon having gone awry. For the moment, he archived the message, quickly categorizing it for future retrieval. He burned daylight lingering on otherwise compelling mysteries, so one might as well move on to the next.

Another ping, and a notification read worse but less grim news:

_シャルァタン_

_Two green graves._

_CoD: Harassing Nexus._

_-Jynx_

Reyes didn’t know what amused him more, the plainly readable cipher of Lynx’s messages or the sheer incompetence of those who followed him. So two recruits died. Cause of death? The phrase was vague, but Reyes could guess what actually happened. A recruit wanted to test how big his boots were and stomped on the wrong people. _Amateurs_ , it was precisely the reckless powertrip Sloane suffered from, and comfortably boring as his life was, he wasn’t ready to let it fall apart because his recruitment system couldn’t screen out for “Racketeering and Extortion.” A grumble nearly simmered from his lips, but even in his privacy he constrained himself into a cool debonair apathy.

 _Erase name and files from database. Replace the pawns for a knight_.

Chess-wise, the best strategy would be to opt for a queen, but that would be overdoing it. One such queen already skirted around in the stars somewhere, he was sure. Speaking of…

_Subject: RE: Checking in_

_To: Reyes Vidal_

_From: Sara Ryder_

_I’m surprised you even remember where I went and with whom. I had a nice time with Scott, thanks for asking :] He said a lot of things that I think I really needed to hear. It’s hard to explain over email._

_I can tell you more if you manage to scrape up some free time. Word’s getting around that Kadara Port is expanding. My frozen ass is very proud of you, all the way here in Voeld. I’ll be in Havarl next. Some of the Angaran scientists needed me (well they need SAM) to dig up stuff. You should take a break from being Big Boss and visit me. It’s been a while, and I miss you._

_-Sara_

The email came unflagged and unforwarded, directly from the lovestruck sender. Reyes almost couldn’t help but read the words too quickly for any meaningful processing, yet somehow he lingered on a phrase or two, wondering what it _really_ meant. The “frozen ass” part brought out a sly and mildly scandalized smirk from him. Considering _how_ long ago they’ve seen each other, he was ready to consider vulgar references to body parts a prelude to more ribald overtures. But it was the second part of that clause which breezed past him. “Proud?” And to think he was just grumbling about how easy his life had become! Reyes went for the bottle, eager for the flow of his _best_ whiskey. He held it up in the air in a feigned toast before promptly imbibing. Somehow the whiskey tasted better from the ritual. _A little like_ _honey_ , he thought.

A sleek hiss as his doors slid open disrupted his quiet celebration. The amber light of his omni tool evanesced as Reyes immediately lowered his arm in a mechanically lackadaisical pose.

“Another boring day in, what do you humans call it? The office?” Keema encroached his space unannounced. It surprised Reyes that his Angaran proxy would so casually walk in without purpose or agenda. Or maybe…

“Boring?” Reyes exaggerated the offended tenor of his voice. “On the contrary! The life of a smuggler is always…” The word hovered at the tip of his tongue as Keema took her seat in a manner that he could only consider _blase_ [Accent the e]. “...Exciting.” He gestured towards his bottle in an offer of gentlemanlike hospitality only to realize there was no glass to share. “I’ll call Kian to bring a glass up for you.” Across from him, Keema shrugged, wholly ambivalent to the idea of mixing business with pleasure. “So what brings you to my,” and he savored the pause preciously wedged into his speech, “humble abode?”

Keema’s bemused laughter betrayed just how unimpressed she was with his all-too-familiar antics. “I have some interesting news, particularly for _you_.”

Whatever that meant, Reyes bit. Or, more accurately, he drank. Too impatient for the aforementioned server and glass, he abandoned all pretenses to etiquette and helped himself to another heaping of his favored drink. He figured Keema should keep at the talking.

The Angaran diplomat likewise followed his cue. “I felt it important you heard it from me personally.”

The amber sheen in his eyes glowed against the red light of the lounge. Reyes leaned forward with one warm rested on his knee. _This better be good_.

“I was approached by a Nexus representative just hours earlier. They came with an offer.”

The glow in his eyes lit to a veritable flame. Something in the wry smile and untensed frame of her shoulders told Reyes that it was a “particularly” good offer, and not necessarily for him either. “The Pathfinder’s people?”

“Not exactly.”

Reyes found himself leaning closer, almost at the edge of his seat. Keema, on the other hand, remained calmly unchanged and comfortable from where she was seated. Something of a silence crawled into the small seconds of space he used to think, to bounce back and ponder on a mystery clearly looming before him. “What sort of offer was it?” Though he had an inkling (more than that, a near-certain theory, actually) what the offer was - no doubt an alliance that would chip away at his influence - the Charlatan himself was not quite prepared to dive head on. He needed more details.

Without a skipping a beat, Keema confirmed much of his fears while laying some to rest. “The Nexus wants friendship.” She crossed her hands on her lap. Flat and agonizingly cool. “Specifically, they want _my_ friendship and not ...yours.”

The careful use of pronouns was searing his nerves. Perhaps a younger version of him would’ve laughed at the magnitude of the Initiative’s incompetence when it came to any _real_ politicking, but ridiculing a fledgling child for waving a loaded gun would not necessarily help either. Yet the question remained as to _who_ approached Keema specifically, or at least who was pulling the strings. If “not exactly” was sufficient to leave Sara out (and Reyes is more than completely certain that it couldn’t be anyone affiliated to any real extent with, much less actually _be_ , Sara) then some neglected prick was making rounds in her absence. And of the countless scores made available since Meridian, the prick had to choose Kadara. Actually, Reyes was half considering laughing. It was too _bad_ to be true; too horrendously inept and lazy and ….

“What about you, Keema?” The only player in the room (aside from his competent self of course) who could actually double down and make some wins sat right across from him. Nonchalant. Almost _too_ nonchalant.

“What about me?” Her almost poor attempt to fake guiltlessness made Reyes’s eye twitch. A rather cavalier smile swept her otherwise soulless conversation. The truth was plain from the mere gleam in her eyes: she was enjoying this.

Reyes set the whiskey back down on the table with a thud. “Whose friendship do you want?”

The sudden, bellowing guffaw that came from his otherwise noiseless Angaran friend shocked him, enough to square his shoulders even just a little. “I’m hurt you would even ask that.” The steadfast grin on her face showed that, no, actually, she was not very hurt. “After all we’ve been through, Reyes.” She clicked her tongue in display of grandiose disapproval.

It didn’t really weigh on him until that very moment that it was a very _good_ instinct to suspect Keema’s own motivations at play; that even _she,_ having been propped up in full awareness of who he _really_ was, would sooner or later come to the realization that she proved a rather sizable asset all on her own. He wondered whether _he_ should feel hurt for having very well-founded suspicions. “Keema,” he could almost sigh back, mirroring her own performed exasperation. Leaning back against the couch, he the felt the tension diffuse from his shoulders to his limbs, to the tips of his fingers, to his now relaxed, sprawled legs. He may never have sat on any real throne the way Sloane or even Keema did, but he needn’t one to prove just how well a king could sit. “You know me. I like to see where my friends sit on any given issue.”

The figure of speech was not lost on the Angaran. She crossed her legs, bulky and sinewy yet perfectly fitted for an elegant pose. Otherwise, she was motionless and insistent that he see her right where she sat: across from him with a leveled gaze. “I’m surprised you haven’t asked me who our mystery friend is.”

 _Your friend_ , Reyes wanted to say, but he wasn’t about to push his luck. “Does it really matter?” Of course it did, but he wasn’t about to reveal his ignorance right then and there. And on such critical moments, he was always more than aware of the importance of commandeering the conversation. “Anyway,” Reyes resumed a more cheerful tone. Friendly, inviting, and somewhat bold, “You haven’t answered my question.”

Laughter erupted once more from Keema, who was a bit less amused with their little drawl of a mind game. “ _Oh_ Reyes Vidal.” The sound of his full name had an easing and matronly ring to it. Like a mother finished with her toddler’s game, she laid down her cards and picked him right off his feet. “Why would I even come here, in person, to say anything of an offer if I actually wanted someone else’s friendship?”

 _True_ , logically, but not quite accurate. The deafening beats thundering just outside the room seemed to pound against Reyes’s ears, pressuring for a more offensive approach to their banter. “Sometimes my friend, we act in terms of _need_ not of want.”

This time Keema said nothing in response. Her eyes merely hovered, seemingly poring through Reyes while simultaneously holding the air between them. She bided the tumult of the music banging through the walls. The accelerating beats did nothing save fill in for the fleeting reprieve. Eager to drown out all the white noise of his thoughts in the music, the human smuggler savored the chance for another sip from his whiskey. “Speaking of wants and needs,” Keema cut in, “how’s Ryder doing?”

The question stopped him mid-drink, the beverage threatening to spill from his slightly agape mouth. Now that he thought about it, that casual and supposed change-of-topic wasn’t so “out of left field.” In fact the rather seamless and topical allusion to a woman one would normally call his “lover” was the most direct answer Keema could ever give in regards to his now suspended question. “You know how it is with Pathfinders.” He let his arm stretch out over the cushions of his couch, trying not to show his discomfort with the present subject matter through a somewhat wide, lopsided grin.

“No, I don’t.” The answer was more of a criticism than a general statement. Keema’s look of disappointment spoke more to his inability to actually evade the question.

“Hard to keep track,” he finished.

“Unlike you, I’m sure.”

Both chuckled at their rapid fire exchange, finding humor in a rather intimate and uncomfortable subject. Of course, this was all a powerplay for Keema too. If there were two things in the galaxy she had over Reyes, it was, point A, knowledge of his alias and real stake in Kadara; point B, knowledge of the more delicate matter of his love life, especially in regards to a rather specific person. Flings were a different thing of course. One couldn’t exactly hold casual partners as collateral, but up until then, Reyes never really considered that his friends or enemies (both, perhaps?) would use Sara against him. Were they afraid he would show the impulse to flex some muscle (literal or figurative) should they indeed pose a threat to his girlfriend? No, not really. It was always the question of how afraid they were of the Pathfinder herself. Before the rather momentous defeat of the Archon, they wouldn’t even dare entertain touching a strand on her violet-hued head. Now, having attained their much longed for _Pax Andromeda_ , the children grew antsy, and they were foolishly looking for a target. Nevertheless, he waited his friend out on the matter. He’d rather not say too much, after all.

“You know, sometimes I worry about her,” she began as she twiddled her… thumbs? (Reyes made a mental note to check appropriate names for Angaran anatomy). “The hero of the hour is usually the first one to fall once time runs out.”

The rather blatant foreboding did it; it did him in. The entire conversation up until that moment, Reyes had a smooth, suave half smile. It always diffused otherwise tense negotiations or uncomfortable formalities, but what started out as a proverbially boring day in the office now had a bit of an edge to it - one for which he would prefer not to take risks.

“Oh relax!” Ever so relaxed herself, Keema could hardly control the elation in her teasing. “All I’m saying is, the Nexus aliens might grow tired of this whole ‘pathfinding’ business. They might want to start settling for something… a lot closer.”

“Like Kadara.” Suddenly the prizes at stake came into full view for him. Places and things over people; business as usual.

“Or Voeld, or Havarl, and maybe even Aya. Meridian, despite what they say, is already _theirs_ after all.”

A stunned silence fell on the Charlatan. He considered how inevitable all this backdoor intrigue was, and he wondered what could’ve possibly distracted him from even preparing for it now that it lay in full view right on his doorstep.

“Of course, the Pathfinder would never allow such a thing,” Keema pointed out, voicing the obvious concerns of Reyes’s thoughts. “So I’m sure they’ll find use for her _particular_ talents running around in faraway places.”

It took his all _not_ to shake his head; not to both deride and seeth over how effortlessly sloppy his enemies were in hanging a guillotine right over the tenuous thread of both his and Sara’s lives. If Keema didn’t want to name the anonymous bidder, fine. If she wanted to be vague about what they wanted and what they were threatening, that was fine too. What proved unusually unnerving was the pointed and almost laser-sharp focus on a name. Reyes almost regretted putting so many eggs in his proxy’s basket. “Name your price Keema.” He straightened his spine in a move so carelessly expressive of his now lackluster penchant for frontier cunning.

“Good friends are priceless,” she said with a humdrum ambivalence.

“And powerful ones offer protections,” he retorted. Their dialogical tango was, weirdly enough, both galvanizing and terrifying. It was precisely the sort of contradiction Reyes had put off all his life and yet craved all morning.

Resting her chin on her knuckles, Keema for once moved from her seat to teeter over its edge. “Fifty-fifty.”

Reyes nearly spit out his drink. “Sixty-forty, I will lift all tariffs on goods traded to and from Aya, and I will personally assure a place for your people on the…” Finding the correct word was always a past time for him, no matter the galaxy, and he savored the newfound opportunity to do so now. “... comelier accommodations of Ditaeon’s expansion.”

Keema sat with a rather delighted smile, ultimately pleased with herself and him above all. “Deal.”

Pleased with the closing, Reyes lifted his bottle as a toast, noticing quite blankly that Keema’s glass never arrived. “Congratulations,” he said before smugly turning the bottle on its head and emptying it of its contents.

She nodded in turn, perfectly happy and pleased that no such drinks were even necessary to relish in sweet, _sweet_ victory. “It’s really adorable, to be honest.”

The seeming non-sequitur was not all that off-putting, come to think of it. He punctuated the thought by slamming down the whiskey on his table. “As you said, good friends are priceless.”

“And lovers? What are they?” She laughed before rising, grinning her whole way as she glided from her seat to the doors of his lounge. A slight pause left her at the room’s threshold. Turning over her shoulder, she offered one last consolation, “I look forward to more work with you, Reyes. You’re a fun one.” And with those parting words, the doors hissed once more as they opened and closed in an instant. The loss of a sparring partner made the room uncomfortably silent, even with the overwhelming noise surrounding him.

Previously uninspired, Reyes was now left alone, armed with nothing save three points in his quotidian agenda:

  1. Answer Sara’s email.
  2. Do some digging around Keema’s bidder, but not too much lest she loses her trust in him completely.
  3. Find an excuse or some precious item to smuggle. He really could use the break.



He was about to call over Kian, ready to complain for once in the rather dire absence of servers and the booze they carry. But he stopped himself short the moment his omnitool opened up its holographic menu. What use would it be anyway? He was nearing his three-drink max “on the job,” so to speak. Suddenly tired, fatigue crept in on his shoulders as he slackened against his seat. The air around him felt as acidic as those sulfur lakes, perpetually at boiling point yet miraculously unperturbed.

 

* * *

 

Subject: RE: RE: Checking In

To: Sara Ryder

From: Reyes Vidal

Havarl? What a coincidence. I was just dreading a run there, but suddenly I find myself... excited.

Yours,

Reyes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> シャルァタン = "Charlatan" written in Katakana
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed it! As always, comments and kudos are much appreciated. Next up, some porn-...uh I mean some quality time between my favorite couple.


	5. "I sought him, but I found him not"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sara and Reyes have a fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay I'm... sorry for this. I don't know what got to me. I just started to ... write in this way.
> 
> Jsyk chapter 4 "(Reyes) Around Others" is necessary to understand what's going on in this chapter. So I highly recommend reading that one to even have an inkling of why they quarrel.
> 
> EXPLICIT LANGUAGE AND SEXUALLY GRAPHIC.

Morning in Harvarl was an impossible phenomenon to capture. The arboreal dome hovering over their camp in a latticework of vines and bioluminescent fungi created the illusion of some endless night. It didn’t really dawn on Reyes how much time had been lost until a slight groan from slumbering trees and the haphazard dithering of what could only be the planet’s version of a lightning bug - glowing with its microscopic cilia in a free float through the air - roused him from his near static focus.

“You’ve been on that thing all night.” Next to him, Sara grumbled with her face buried into the sandy ground as she lay on her side. A bit of starlight fell like a sheen on her bare back, the upper half rendered silver by its pallor. She made no move to turn, neither did she hazard an attempt to face him. After all, her eyes will closed and droopy with much needed sleep. Yet a bit of a chill was present, for she huddled close with arms crossed over her chest. A slight quiver of her arms formed a faint outline in the now receding dark.

The interruption was enough to cut through his steel-like focus over his omni-tool’s holographic interface, thrumming as it did with white noise. “You know how it is,” he answered coolly, but when not even an amused chuckle made itself heard from her side of the hallowed grove, Reyes got a little defensive. He tore his eyes from the screen, ready to calm any and all suspicions. “No rest for the wicked.” It was a particularly clever adage, he thought. But just to make sure, he laid a hand on her shoulder and rubbed gently against the jagged peaks of her bones. She neither accepted nor spurned his comforts. The rather languid indifference of her still body would’ve been grounds for comfort and security for most men, but Reyes was not like most men. His fingers drummed against the flab of skin hanging beneath her arm. Soft, tender, and maybe, when in action, more firm. But in its bloodless calm, he found it soothing to trace the space between her sides and her limbs, in which heat pulsed through the crevices of her skin. “I thought you were asleep.” A poor excuse, but he had to try.

An audible sigh hailed from hair-strewn mouth as she rolled over to face him, revealing her not-so-droopy eyes. “I can hardly sleep,” she said. For all the scare she gave him, Sara didn’t look too annoyed. No, there was even a smile on her lips, pink-bitten as they were from last night’s revelries.

Reyes always thought of Sara as _green_ . Like summer? Like spring? It wasn’t so much a color of innocence or vibrant life that followed her around all aura-like. It was her state of mind - one that saw no harshness in the fungi crawling around in droves, or the encroaching trees bulwarked around them. Least of all, she did not take offense (or at least, she didn’t _show_ it) at the fact that the moment they saw each other, after months apart, the first thing they did was indulge and partake the first chance they got with nothing but grass for a bed and a tree for cover. The second thing they did? They ignored each other. Mere hours of relishing in the silence of the Charlatan’s never ending work and the Pathfinder’s own fatigue-induced insomnia filled the gaps in between.

“You probably need a more comfortable bed,” he joked, yes, but it was more a statement of truth than anything. One could hardly call xeno-botanical roots jutting over against one’s spine a comfortable mattress. Not to mention, _she_ was stark naked in the openness of it all, and Reyes, for his part, already got halfway started through dressing, or at least just enough to read and answer emails without so much as catching a cold.

Sara picked herself up with a trace of a smile and pressed her chest against his back as she perched her chin delicately over his shoulder. Her fingers smoothed over the hard ridges between his ribs, where sinew and skin met. “What are you up to now?” Sounding harmlessly curious yet knowingly mischievous in intention, he could feel the weight of her torso leaning over and against him, trying to read through his work.

Once, in a time that wasn’t really long ago, Reyes promised her no more secrets. Now he found himself constantly asking _what_ exactly counted as a secret.

But before he could dig his own grave, she preemptively cut him off, “And don’t say ‘the usual,’ whatever that means.” She planted a kiss right below his ear lobe, where the tension of his jaw pivoted over his neck. “And don’t lie either. SAM can tell if you’re lying.” A barely suppressed giggle sounded out from her throat, as if she was fully aware just how _sinister_ that sounded. Reyes almost took the bait and turned to face her, but he was wrapped wholly in a backward embrace of her arms over his waist, her thighs over his hips. “ _Relax_ ,” she chided. But she didn’t follow up with _I’m kidding_.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that,” he admitted, genuinely displeased. “But if you must know, it _is_ the usual.” She puffed rather audibly behind his ear. So he continued with a slightly less vague answer. “Oh you know, power struggles, rivals, bread and circuses - everything necessary to smoothly run a shitshow.” He lowered his arm and the omnitool seemed to have faded with its light. Now, he had the illusion of giving her his undivided attention.

The answer was meant to waylay further inquiry, but to believe that answer would’ve worked was naive, at best. Sara _was_ the pathfinder after all. She didn’t survive settling for evasive half answers. “What’s wrong?” The concern she intoned seemed as frail as she made him out to be. Furrowed brows with eyes as glossy as the starlit sky were enough to bring anyone, even himself maybe, to tears. But that too was just a mere act, for she quickly pecked at his neck with another light kiss.

 _Green?_ Who the fuck was he kidding. She was manipulative as hell - a sort of skill easily missed when he spent adequate amounts of time infantilizing her. And he was duly punished for it, for it didn’t take her long to start running circles down the lines of his abdomen, flirting dangerously lower to his beltline.

“And I thought you were tired.” As soon as the words trailed out of his mouth, a line of kisses flitted down his spine. Her hands, meanwhile, were quite contented playing with the sharp angles that trailed from his waist to his groin. The slight graze of her fingers was enough of a provocation, sending him tumbling, in spite of himself, towards another round of leisurely forgetting. The dance was familiar by now: a quick turn, then he literally lifts her by the waist for a delicate instant. It didn’t take long for the two to crash to the ground, mouths already locked as they burrow further into each other. Reyes wedged himself between her thighs as he found himself wondering why he even bothered to partially dress.

Hours before, when they deigned to make love after something of a dry spell, the motions were almost mechanical. No thought. No drive save that of a long-repressed need to satisfy some indeterminable ache. The momentum of it all rendered their moments into episodic flashes, like mere instances in a dream. Whatever pleasure they gained from it was numbing. Now, the second time was proving quite the charm, for Reyes didn’t realize _just_ how bad it hurt to pull away from her until she broke the kiss.

Sara held his jaw in her hands as she pressed his nose against his. The angle was cute, he thought, because she had a much smaller nose. Their mouths brushed past one another over her attempts to graze and fondle the lines of his bones. “Let me take care of you,” she whispered. And she did that funny thing where she giggled as she nibbled the crook of his nose down to the corners of his mouth. Those little habits, he thought, that could make him almost pity her for all the secrets he still kept.

It was enough of a distraction, for he was wholly unprepared when she rose from the ground and swung one leg over to straddle him. Her deft maneuvering made the shift in positions almost seamless, even if somewhat shocking when Reyes found his back pressed flat on malleable soil. Sara’s hair, short as it was, cascaded from her temples and brushed against his face. The looming sunrise in the horizon beyond them could hardly break through the streams of green and blue radiating against her hair. Even her skin almost glowed in a violet hue under such lighting. She flashed a bit of a wry smile, no doubt pleased with herself as she made short work of his pants.

“You work too much.” She was a bit coy in saying it, almost timid in contrast to her more cavalier approach in touching him, wrapping lithe fingers around him, feeling for him, and combing through the roughened curls around his groin. She cupped his balls in smooth and tender motions, relishing the moments when he warmed up to her touch. Another round a few hours too soon made it feel fuzzy at first. Yet the heat of her skin soon sent blood rushing where it needed to. The blush on her cheeks lent an illusion of bashfulness as she guided him towards her, letting his erect cock brush against the still small nub of her clit and down the soft lips of her cunt.

His eyes dilated purely in frustration. Impatience soon blended in with its own greediness. Wanting and needing becoming confused, Reyes demanded both in her. He grabbed her by the ass, cupping her soft muscles where they joined with her thighs, as he stared hungrily below her neck. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

What happened next wasn’t exactly what Sara planned. She meant to tease him; to relax him; to get him unhinged. Yet she forgot just how unhinged he could get, especially when he had no qualms pushing her down as he plunged into her thighs; or when he took one of her breasts into his mouth, biting the tender flesh he had the luxury of tasting. Nothing was left for her to do save to buckle her hips into his, to ride in soft, flowing waves as he pushed against sweet, honeyed muscle. She was thankful that he sat upright, because at least she could wrap her arms over his shoulders, crossing over the back of his neck. The exchange of pants and moans did much to settle the pace with which he lifted her whole weight in each push and pull of their limbs.

“Let me take care of you,” she repeated, but something with the slight mewl in her voice meant that Sara was begging this time. It was enough to pull him away from her breast and back to her mouth, kissing but slightly missing from the jolts and spasms of a harsh rhythm. As if to assert herself, she aided him with the strength of her own legs. She slid and rolled against the bones of his hips, accommodating the length of him as he dove deeper. She pressed her mouth against his ear in release of a hoarse and dry whisper. “You can trust me.”

As if _that_ was even at stake. Yet Reyes wasn’t in any sort of rush to calm her suspicions. There really wasn’t time to think about what to say, when all the thoughts he could form were incoherent images of her eyes, shut and wincing from that painful yearning of feeling full and empty all at once, or the rare yet precious quiver of her lip when she wanted to say something - that one thing - neither of them really wanted to hear right then and there.  And to make up for it all, he wasn’t above giving her scraps. “Nothing. Just…” He struggled to mouth the words when each breath seared through his throat. He found his hands pitching into the small of her back, struggling to anchor himself somewhere in the endlessness he felt inside her. “...Sara.” He hadn’t meant to utter her name like that, but they both almost laughed in between heaves of breaths. He felt a tight, welling pressure around him. Wet, nectared… He imagined she would’ve been sweet too had his tongue ventured there first.

“Just what?” She was ready to pick up where he left off. Eager to hear the answer, she almost ignored the fact that she was writhing above him, clinging around his neck for dear life, and almost bouncing against the sporadic thrusts of her lover.

“Jealous people,” he spoke in a low growl just beneath her jaw. “People who want,” and he paused to part his lips from her once more, to stare up at her with eyes flowing with gold. “... Exactly what I have.” The couple fixed their gazes together, locked and intertwined as he pounded into her with relative ease.

Sara wanted to laugh, because she knew better than to think his answer was actually about her. Wrapped around him, melting into him, she wanted nothing more than that to be true. So she closed her eyes, just for the moment, to relish in the feeling of his words as his thighs pistoned beneath hers in a silencing measure. But the knowing grin of a woman who couldn’t really ever be kept in the dark was a wild card she meant to use. She interspersed the noise of their bodies dancing in a web of spit, sweat, and sticky skin with her own hushed little cries for more of him. And the smile on her face, with a chuckle teetering at the edge of her lips, could hardly speak for the way she rutted into Reyes, feeling all of him despite the near certain impossibility of taking him and drowning more of him inside her. So she laughed a bit of a mad laugh. No one ever warned her how _good_ he was in both word and deed.

And Reyes, holding her together as she seemed to fall apart around him, wanted nothing more than to do her bidding - to touch her in places he was yet to reach. That she so blithely found amusement in their fleeting and not-so-innocent tryst, however, proved that maybe (just maybe) he was losing a game he never thought they played. He wanted to ask what was so funny, but Sara was beating him to it.

“Is it money?” A moan punctuated the question. And when he didn’t immediately answer, he could feel her clench in teasing frustration.

Reyes didn’t really want to talk about it. In fact, he didn’t want to talk at all. He wanted to savor the thick feel of her neck against his teeth; to pump against her walls and to drown her out with her own calls for tortuous relief. And knowing first hand just how stubborn his dear Sarianna can be, he went for alternatives. Namely, letting his hand slither down her belly, between the part of her thighs. His fingers trailed up from where he entered her to the ripened button calling for attention. He teased it, lavishing it with the pressured touches of his expert fingers. The whimpering plea between her hitched breaths told him just how well it worked. _Real_ work could come later. Work could come after he spent and drained all the time he had with her. It wasn’t necessarily some dark secret he was keeping, anyway. It was the fact that mentioning any of it - the nitty gritty details of intrigue and backdoor deals - would no doubt soil what time they had with each other; and typical Sara would spend the rest of it, not on top of him, straddling him with her thighs, and bouncing her body up and down his cock for the mere euphoria of it. No, she would waste precious time solving his problems and peering into more of him than he would ever let anyone know. The rule of thumb was that it was better to keep things simple, and sometimes simple meant making your woman orgasm before she could start to worry. Besides, why upset her? She looked so happy then…

“I know,” almost devious in her tone, Sara didn’t hesitate to cross that boundary between them. “A trade deal gone bad?”

It took a delayed wave of seconds for him to process any of it, to hear and understand just what she had so mischievously whispered into his ear.

“What?” He froze with his hands still pitched over her waist. A somewhat disbelieving smile crawled onto his mouth. The sudden look of shock on Sara’s face betrayed just how badly it hurt to stop right then and there.

She fumbled despite herself, almost amnesiac-like in how she lost her train of thought. “What? I-...” A grin was still plastered on her face, lost in the trance of seconds spent riding her lover. She shook her head and pressed her forehead against his in a calming and comforting gesture. “Oh just… just something Tann wouldn’t shut up about.” Her eyes struggled to open, still capturing the beads of sweat that weighed down her lashes. “It’s actually not that important…” Her mouth parted to kiss him, as if all of the issue is resolved and for once she had gotten what she wanted out of Reyes.

But he begged to differ. “What do you mean?” His hands quickly moved for her shoulders, grabbing them and positioning them further away from him. Sara gave a pained expression with how he drew back, almost repulsed based on the look of his furrowed brow. “What does Tann have to do with it?”

Her eyes seemed to widen with regretful shame. A pitiable, softer look he never saw her pull. Something about it, with the way her hair framed her face into this delicate, vulnerable shape, tugged at Reyes in ways he hadn’t anticipated. An itch in his throat? A slight pang in his chest? He couldn’t tell, but he felt just as sorry as he felt surprised to hear that maybe there _was_ some slight chance his so-called sweetheart was involved in the very plan that had almost put him under (if not for the now praiseworthy honesty of a business partner looking out for herself). Silence filled in for the words until Sara could gather her thoughts. “Nothing just… Tann said he wanted more control over Kadara.” The finality of her intonation implied that she was done. Point finished, and she was ready to nurse back his erection inside her, but he stopped her short again, just as she drew in for another kiss.

“You mean that _prick_ wanted it?”

Sara grimaced at the slightly strange choice of words. “Well, not just Tann. Pretty much everyone but Kesh wanted Initiative control over Kadara.”

There was something missing. Reyes could feel something bubbling in his throat. A stern look of his eyes demanded she spit out more. “And what about you?”

“I said ‘good luck.’ It’s not like they have much of a chance without the Angara anyway…” She rolled her eyes as if the sarcasm was an evident denial of all involvement, all responsibility in the rather subtle, almost unseen coup that threatened him just days before. She made as if to wrap her arms around him for one last attempt to brush it all over and frolick in much needed “shore leave,” and she tried hard to suppress the annoyed twitching of her brow for every time he spurned her advances.

Yet Reyes caught her by the wrists. A muted, almost restrained look of dread fell on his face. “You told them about Keema? About…” He didn’t exactly name himself, but it was more the dread that _his_ woman - brilliant pioneer and ruthless sharpshooter with an almost unparalleled AI for brain power - making the dumb move that cut him off mid speech.

“ _No_ not about you!” She insisted. The contorted lines of her face almost pained him to see. She looked so afraid, so frail, and so uncharacteristically panicked about what was happening to her. Yet not even such a sympathetic performance could distract Reyes from noting that she didn’t deny how loose her tongue got when it came to his Angaran front. He may not have an AI or a scanner, but there was no hiding the sudden shortness of her breathing, or even the clearly pounding beat of her heart so close to him. He had forgotten just how close they were still.

It was almost pathetic. Not _her_ . Well, maybe her. Or maybe _him_ for having such a careless approach to his love life now that everything had - apparently - fallen into place. “But you told them about Keema.”

“Should I _not_ have told them?”

 _Shit_. He didn’t even have to look at her to know just how stupid they both felt then. Sara still remained awkwardly straddling him, quiet as a mouse. And Reyes, for all he knew, could only exhale in that same exasperated tone that ran with his recurring bouts of paranoia.

“I didn’t know-...”

 _Didn’t know?!_ A withheld breath sucked the words in. He wasn’t about to lose his cool right at that moment. So instead, he settled for her shifting away, moving around and against her so that they no longer sat knotted in an embrace.

“Listen, Reyes-...”

It would’ve been tempting to answer, but it was better - for both of them - if he wordlessly got up from the ground, looked for his pants, his shirt, his vest, his holster… _Shit_.

“Wait!” Poor Sara sat kneeling on the ground, by herself, bare and shivering now that his warmth left her. “They wanted names…” Words flew through her mouth in hapless defense. And when he didn’t listen, when her lover merely turned around to start grabbing his things, she trailed after him in undaunted and desperate fashion. “They were worried about Ditaeon. _I_ was worried about Ditaeon, Reyes! People were dying, and they wanted to know who else could possibly-...”

A laugh, somewhat tired and infinitely less warm than those they had shared just moments before, disrupted her excuses. “You’re one hell of a woman, Ryder,” he said with a lopsided grin, shaking his head all the same as he unrolled the sleeves of his jacket. “But don’t play the fool the moment those _pendejos_ beg you for protection.”

The fighting words left her bereft of all hashed up vindications. She wasn’t quite sure why he had deflected all efforts on her part for explanation, and neither could she see - at least from how he acted and what he had said - _why_ naming names suddenly grew to be a big deal.

“In case you’re wondering,” and of course Reyes was always quick on the uptake, “your helpless _friends_ on the Nexus offered to buy out Keema - and the rest of the Angara with her.” The tinge of disgust ringing through the word “friends” nearly made Sara tremble as she stayed muted with guilt. He shuffled through his pants, shaking off his coiffed hair. He wanted to explain more, how he lost nearly half of his share of the wealth, how he was forced to take a cut that could seriously impinge on the magnitude of the Collective itself, but instead he settled for something else - something closer to home. “She dangled your name in front of me like bait!” he was mostly yelling at himself, but of course Sara didn’t take it that way. She stood behind him in a huddled posture, arms crossing over to hug her own nakedness as he stood, half clothed and ready to leave her. It was _such_ a power play. “Get dressed. You’ll catch a cold.”

The sting of rejection was something Sara was _very_ unused to. True enough, she had seen him distant if not wholly elsewhere, managing an indiscernible web of goods and things; she had seen him frustrated; and yes she had seen him angry. Once, if one could count being done with an ex-girlfriend’s bullshit as an episode of anger. But-... wait. “Reyes listen to me!” She circled around, trailing his eyes with every step he took to avoid her. “They just asked for _leadership_. They said nothing about making off with some credits!”

“Unfortunately, Sara,” he said, finally provoked into an interruption, “Not everything is about _credits_.” The last word stung with a hiss.

“Then what is it about?!”

 _What_ ? A dumbfounded look cast over his glare when her question fell. A million answers sprung up; a million different retorts all entangled somehow with credits lining the necessary pockets or much-needed stability hanging off the balance of his own investments. He never bothered with one. Not that Reyes needed to. Even if the bottomline was money, how could he not care? Too much was spent; more than money was spent making sure that he _got_ to a certain point; that he kept reaching a threshold that moved farther away with newer and riskier demands. It was part of the job, and it was something that maybe _someone_ who glided her way through life and powerful positions would never understand. Yet he felt no such desire to even fan the flames of _that_ kind of argument, because something about the rather insolent wrinkling of her brows told him she had her own point to make.

“You’re pissed at me because you know deep down this _is_ about credits.” Somewhere in those words, she had a point, and yet something stopped her just short of making it.

“Your point?”

Her lip curled to a frown and added a menacing tinge simmering beneath those glossy, rose-tinted eyes. “I mean since you’ve come out as ‘the Charlatan,’” the invisible air quotes were enough to reveal some sort of qualm long ago suppressed but now reaching boiling point, fighting to get to the surface. “Since you and I-...” she wanted to say _became lovers_ , but that was hardly the thing to call something as unofficial as what they had. “You’ve always been elsewhere-...”

Reyes scoffed, utterly perplexed that she should bring up something so irrelevant to the topic at hand. “Don’t change the subject Ryder, it doesn’t become you.”

The dismissiveness of it all made her bite her tongue, almost puncturing it in a barely checked deluge of frustration. There wasn’t so much anger as there was something of a built up anticipation awaiting the coherence of an argument long put-off. In this, Sara didn’t back down, especially when Reyes chose to give her the space. “If Keema didn’t force your hand, you would never have given any of it up.”

Something tight; something dense. It welled in his stomach with nauseating heaviness. Reyes wanted to pretend he didn’t _just_ hear that. To hear it and actually listen would involve a degree of honesty, like letting in a small drop of oil that would no doubt _ruin_ everything he worked so hard for. It was the sort of drama he had avoided all along. So he said nothing and let her badger him with complaints she felt necessary to air out right then and there.

“You promised me you’d be _different_ .” There, they finally got to it - the crux of something gnawing at them since peace threatened them on all fronts with boredom and stability. “What does it matter what you lost? Don’t you have enough?” Her pleading eyes cried out for an answer: let _her_ be enough; let _her_ take up the mantle while he, resting on the laurels of his past crimes, withered into obscurity. It was the sort of fantasy he never suspected her of having, but he never quite took Sara Ryder to be so selfish in that regard. Something strange happened in the seconds between the revelation of her own (however unintentional) guilt and that of the abrupt emergence of a nagging grievance both had carefully swept under the rug. “Maybe this time we can be together now. We can-...” Oh Sara. Oh poor, naive Sara.

“What?!” Truly, Reyes was more puzzled than he was offended. “You want me to sit on my ass while you fly around and play pioneer?!” The hitched breaths dotting each and every seething word could almost send him flying.

But the dam had broken, and really Sara had nothing more left to say. “That’s not-...”

“Unlike you, _Pathfinder_ , some of us had to claw our way out into this world.”

“Oh because _that’s_ fair.” She backed her own remonstrance with a stubbornness that refused to let him feel comfortable about the situation. Standing there, before him, showing the body he could blissfully enjoy so long as they didn’t talk, she wanted to throw at him all he didn’t know; all she tried to divulge only to have it whisked away in equivocations and lonesome hours spent waiting for the next email. She almost menaced him with a look that _begged_ him to just say the words to her face.

“‘Fair’ is for fools, Sara,” he hissed back through grinded teeth. The pettiness of having to state what would’ve been obvious - painfully so - sharpened the rather sour taste in his mouth. “I didn’t get to where I am now by fighting ‘fair.’”

Something in the forest died. Perhaps it was the ambient thrumming, or the languorously complaints of arboreal structures that grew tired of their arguing. It left them hollow and more alone than they ever wanted to be. Worst of all, they were feeling that disquieting wave of loneliness _together_.

“Pathfinder,” SAM’s cool and strangely calm voice peered almost meekly from the speakers of her Omni-Tool. “The day shift is about to begin. Report back to the research facility for further instruction.”

It then dawned on them both that the familiar mist seeping through the lights and flares of Havarl had moved on. The trees, previously and perpetually groaning against the slight shifts in the wind or in the movements of lurking giants roving in the distances, now seemed smaller against the harsh golden light of a star rising to a fully fledged morning. The flitting insects, the glowing mushrooms, and the incandescent moss seemed to lose much of their spark, like embers waning through a doused fire. Daylight in Havarl was somewhat bleak, somewhat bland compared to the magnificence spent in the silence of its shade with nothing save a grass and the roots of a hospitable tree for a fleeting, dreamlike bed.

“Where are you going?” Sara rushed after Reyes as he tried to walk away without another word. Of course, he had been satisfied with the interruption. The pointlessness of it; the somewhat inevitability of it really complicated things, and for Reyes, complicated meant something other than excitement. It meant kinks and failures despite the constant watch kept over his well oiled machine. And he wasn’t about to continue a discussion in which Sara was unequivocally guilty and yet unapologetic about her carelessness.

“I have business to take care of,” he answered, wholly unfazed by her fumbling. She tried to pick up after her clothes and to scramble for her gun and armor before he could so much as fade back into the forest’s shadows.

“We’re not finished!”

“For now we are.”

“Reyes!”

The cry stopped him, but he kept his back facing her in callous indifference to her pleas. She didn’t want to argue anymore either. She had hoped that - with pensive eyes, lips pursed in regretful sayings, and a sadness that told him just how sorry she was, frail in the way she clutched at her clothes over her chest - he would turn around and laugh it all off too. Or he would say something pithy that smoothed over all the wrinkles in a relationship barely held together by moments scraped up and sutured through an endlessness of escapisms and half-truths. She had hoped for all these things in the stretched out seconds he held his breath and refused to face her.

“I’ll call you,” he said, but he might as well have said nothing for his voice drifted off in the opposite direction. Over to the distances where she wasn’t, that was where he always seemed to make his promises. And he left her with such a pittance for consolation, alone and shivering as the last rays of a sunrise swept over the valley. Not even their tiny grove was safe from exposure.


	6. Sentimental

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reyes ponders the meaning of his relationship with Sarianna.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am *so* sorry for the delay! I... refused to let these two breakup for a bit, but I think I've come up with more chapters that will delay it as long as possible haha. As always, feedback is MUCH appreciated.

When Reyes first met Sara Ryder, he didn’t think she’d so easily latch onto such an incorrigible flirt. Sure, she looked pretty (even then), maybe on the young side with that rather rebellious cotton candy look. She looked  _ annoyed  _ even, perhaps offended that someone as clean and green as a summer’s day had to rub shoulders with all the rough and rugged types patronizing Kralla’s Song. He predicted she’d be unamused by how proudly Kadara’s denizens wore its grime. For  _ those  _ types, Reyes could always rely on the irrepressible habit of innuendos and smooth one-liners. If she didn’t like it, then he could laugh it off and ease a bit of the tension. If she did, well… as mentioned, she was at least pretty.

“You look like you’re waiting for someone.” 

As if on cue, Umi was ready with two glasses of Everlast whiskey. Not his favorite, but Reyes at least knew how to cope. 

Leaning smug with her arms crossed, the Pathfinder had a response ready. “Not interested.” The almost off-putting haughtiness could make him laugh. It _still_ made him laugh, even two years later. He remembered thinking, _What a piece of work, this one_...   

Yet Sarianna, as he has had the privilege to learn, was not entirely intolerable given her inborn sense of condescension. True enough, that evening she proved rather naive in the way she threw a rather unsympathetic and puristic light against Sloane (which, incidentally, was a benefit). Perhaps like many Initiative hopefuls, this  _ pathfinder  _ grew up in some cozy world where “honor among thieves” somehow meant something; or maybe she was one of those all-or-nothing types who could only find meaning in a venture so long as they did it  _ their way _ . Still, there were moments when he noticed a bashful smile threatening to erupt mid-conversation; or, dare he say it, a tinge of red lining her already sunburnt cheeks with a mere wink of his eye.

The ensuing days inevitably levelled walls between the two, unveiling surprise after surprise in the little details that would never change. For one, Reyes learned that Sara was actually a terrible liar. So bad, in fact, that the truth (or at least, her idea of the truth) always spewed forth from her mind in unfiltered glee. There was no hiding the soft smile behind her performed disapproval when they infiltrated the Roekkar base. “You’re late,” she said. At the time, the cliche “better late than never” proved exacting, considering she never looked so happy to see him. Sure, she may have been relieved she wasn’t going to get cut into pieces by a group of brainwashed serial killers. Still, a smile is a smile and Reyes took his victories where he could get them. 

Then there was the matter of Zia Cordier and the glaring pout Sara gave when Umi unsubtly described her as an “ex” of his. Umi wasn’t exactly what one would call tactless, so Reyes was a little less than grateful for the needless provocation. Though Sara kept things down to questions, the scrunch of her nose was a tell tale sign, and it warned Reyes that perhaps she wasn’t quite a piece of work so much as she was just a tough girl who failed horrendously at masking her feelings. She was an open book, and a verbose one at that. He would never forget the rather pointed words detailing exactly what she felt about him to his scheming ex-girlfriend, “Reyes is a better man than you think,” she said. If, as Shakespeare once said, “Brevity is the soul of wit,” then Sara had a lot of soul but not a lot of wit. If she was witty, she would never have given purchase to his wily charms, much less see anything redeemable from them. Yet he’d be lying if he didn’t find something... touching about it. 

Reyes surprised even himself when, hours after the event, he found himself vocalizing his interest in Sara a little too  _ publicly _ . Suddenly he was arbitrarily giving orders to lackeys and operatives to track the Pathfinder. “Make sure she doesn’t get too close to Drauillir,” he would say. “If she is close, make her feel welcome,” he’d later add. In front of dearer friends he found himself keeping tabs on her whereabouts, always positioning drop ships on rather convenient intersections and locations in case a run-in with the Outcasts was inevitable. Keema was the first to express amusement.

“You’re awfully concerned about this woman,” she said, ever with the amused and gentle smile which often accompanied her words. 

Reyes didn’t really want to bite the bait. “You know what they say, ‘keep your friends close…’”

“...And the pretty ones, closer?” Keema looked so pleased herself. For an Angaran trying to survive the rather disastrous card dealt her species, she was quick.

But the greatest surprise of it all was how easily  _ he  _ fell into a rhythm. He found any and every excuse to send Sara emails; pointless words of “thank you” or even the poor pretense of “updates.” He didn’t send  _ too  _ much, at least he didn’t think so, anyway. He kept to the standard maximum of “three per month.” Suffice it to say, he was  _ very  _ glad when the month ended, because soon it meant he could conjure up new excuses to add even more innocent flirting into the mix. 

The best part of it all? Reyes didn’t even realize he was falling in love. How could he? He wasn’t the type. He loved a good romance, yes, but actually expecting a passionate harlequin love affair was the sort of quixotic pyramid scheme he passed off without question. But steeped as he was in such cynicism, he would catch himself thinking about the last time they spoke, relishing the weightlessness of her words whenever she bestowed them. In retrospect, he would find whatever impulses he was entertaining on all things Sara-related somewhat problematic if not mildly embarrassing. It wasn’t like him at all to shower affectations much less  _ crave  _ it from someone else. Something was horribly wrong. Maybe it had been a while… Maybe he was feeling unusually lonely, given all the power and what-not, and he wanted an out. The only thing to do about it was to get whatever urges out of his system and be done with it. They were both adults, after all. They could sort this out.

Oh how wrong he was! He should’ve known the moment she asked in a disbelieving yet nonetheless pleased tone whether or not the party at Sloane’s counted as a “date.” There was no denying  _ just  _ how big her eyes got - a detail that was impossibly captured through the holographic mess of a vidcom call.  _ Then  _ there was the flattering matter of her assertiveness against the inept bouncer. “I’m with someone,” she claimed, ready to cast off all doubt as to  _ what  _ they were to everyone including indifferent strangers. 

Reyes couldn’t even check the smug grin on his face.

He never expected the first kiss. Or, perhaps he  _ wished  _ for it as he stood in utter cluelessness while he looked to her for some sort of plan. He barely caught a breath when she pulled him in. The muffled sounds of his instinctive remonstrance melted into a soft moan of approval. It was worth remembering, Reyes decided. He did, after all, like how soft her mouth felt; how even the gin served in Sloane’s party couldn’t drown out the sweetness of her tongue. Like the best wine, hers was of a heady melodrama. Even though he couldn’t quite lose himself; though his eyes glanced here and there to scout out would-be intruders; he savored every last breath she gave him.

_ “You’re someone to me _ . _ ”  _

Reyes wasn’t too sure if she really knew the full weight of her words, what exactly they entailed, and whether or not “being someone” to her meant a quiet acceptance of who he was in all his lying glory. Funny, he thought, how awkward he felt just moments before her declaration; how he felt the youthful timidity not of a man but a boy who felt small; a nobody who caved under the weight of their own unanchored anonymity. But Sarianna, as he has had the privilege to learn, saw something in him she would never let go of. And in this way, the second kiss became the first. Real, unafraid, and senseless of the world before them. 

 

* * *

 

Their argument played in his head like a catchy tune: endlessly addicting and ingratiatingly everywhere. He mulled over the pointed words and the thoughtless jabs; how he boldly accused her of _gliding_ through her life despite everything she had been through. And how could he forget? “ _You promised me you’d be different_.” For once, Reyes didn’t know what to do.   

“Oh don’t be so glum!” Keema gave his shoulder a light shove. That night, she was celebrating in Tartarus. All the Angara were indulging in the festive mood, and Kian was generous with his tap. All was well, except for the one hiccup of a very unhappy charlatan. 

“What’s the matter with him?” Kian nodded off to the unusually taciturn Reyes as he poured the other patrons more drinks.  

“Shush,” Keema answered with a playful smile. “He’s  _ brooding _ . Leave him be.”

The bartender merely shrugged and went along his business.

Even if things went unacknowledged, the change in tone was exceedingly palpable. Since the silent takeover, his once jolly bartender, Kian, grew more complacently tight lipped around the Angara. To save face on the “front end” of things, he had to outsource more of the security detail to the Resistance - all in all a politically savvy and appealing result, but something about it left him brushed up in the dust. And if Reyes was anything, he didn’t like being left behind on _anything._  

“You know Reyes,” the Angaran ambassador began, seemingly on a new tone and mood. She took an emptied glass from the bar and slid it next to her friend, pouring for him his usual poison of choice. “I’m sure if you apologized she’d take you back.” A glimmer in her eye shone as she watched the glass fill with the amber hued whiskey. The music around them was so loud, Reyes could’ve sworn the glass shook with the beats’ reverberations.

He took her offer and emptied the glass of its meager contents, draining it all for its numbing pleasure. “That’s not the issue.”

“Why, then whatever are you upset for?!” She fanned her hand over her mouth in feigned shock. She clicked her tongue at him before patting a sympathetic hand over his arm. “You, Reyes Vidal, are one of the wealthiest men in Heleus-” she paused on the qualification (a detail that added insult to injury, seeing as how Reyes was actually  _ the  _ wealthiest man in Heleus at one point), “a woman who loves you-”

“She doesn’t love me.” He slammed the glass back on the counter, as the loud thud could’ve substituted for an exclamation. His golden eyes stared off into the distance of Kian’s bar, lost as they were in a thousand-yard stare. “She doesn’t even  _ know  _ me.” The listlessness of his tone betrayed  _ just  _ how drunk he was - a fact previously unknown to his two companions.

“Does anyone?” Keema quickly countered. She sighed and leaned forward on the counter. A bob of her head signalled to Kian that she needed a refill, and the attentive bartender undoubtedly obliged. 

Reyes mulled over the question as he gazed into the swirl of alcohol in his glass. “You’re right.”

“Don’t be so dramatic!” 

He could hear the exasperation in her tone, however cheerfully she inflected. Strange as it was, Reyes never expected Keema to be one trying to console him. He would chalk it up to guilty conscience - a sign that she  _ did  _ feel sorry for letting business overtake their friendship, but it was clear enough from the hemming and hawing of her own gait and gestures that she found him to be a bore. Worse, a buzz kill. Now she was just trying to swat his bad mood away.

“Be adults and just  _ talk  _ about it.”

A smirk emerged from the previously morose smuggler at the thought of just _talking_ about things. He raised his glass against the lights of the bar, their colors lending the liquor a blood-tinged hue. “To be honest Keema, I don’t want to talk about it.” 

She rolled her eyes, tired of his glibness. “Suit yourself.” 

With those words, the Angaran ambassador left him to his own devices. That is, his drink, his own lonesome company, and the memories he had to contemplate for the entirety of the evening. He  _ could  _ get drunk and, try as he might, forget just how much it all meant to him. Forgetting was easy. It meant he didn’t have to think too much on things and whether or not it meant anything to him in the end. 

“Kian!” he shouted. The bartender turned just in time to see Reyes tap his glass several times. He was going to be spending a long night  _ thinking  _ things, and he’d need all the help he can get.

 

* * *

 

To: Reyes Vidal

From: Sarianna Ryder

It’s been three weeks. Were you ever going to call? 

-Sara


	7. Things Fall Apart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As described in chapter title

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um... I GAVE UP ON TRADITIONAL PROSE I'M SORRY!

_ Vetra: What do you even want out of this relationship? _

_Sara: I… I don’t know._  

_ The two faced the sunset, but neither of them held their gaze against it. It was too bright, after all. _

_ Quietly to herself, Sara wonders if one can “get” anything out from anyone, much less a person like Reyes. _

 

* * *

 

Perhaps a nightclub wasn’t the best place to settle things, but it would have to do. She was the Pathfinder. She “made do” with what she had, even if it often meant messing up. Messing everything up.

“What are you doing here?” He didn’t sound pleased at all. 

“It’s been a month.”

“You’ve held out for far longer.” 

His words were _so_ harsh. She wondered if he was aware just how deep they cut. 

“What’s the matter with you?!” 

She grabbed his shoulder the moment he tried to turn his back. She wasn’t going to let him, even in front of a crowd; even if they had an audience. There was a reason why the clink of glasses, the mellifluous laughter soaring in the air high above the music, the rave of howls and gestures that so often drowned out their voices seemed a little stilted. 

But much to her surprise, he didn’t turn back in anger. “What’s the matter with  _ me _ ?” He laughed, as if there was some dramatic irony concealed from her. “Trust me, I’ve asked myself that too many times.” Reyes brushed off her hand, like one swatting away an impetuous fly.

 

* * *

 

_ Crux: With the Angaran reinforcements, we were able to cut down on the costs for transport, but… _

_ Reyes said nothing. He knew what Crux was about to report. So he kept still on his seat, feigning a lackadaisical pose the way he leaned against the cushion. His arms seemed to sprawl, to drown into the mired and moldy fabric of his furniture _ .

_ Reyes: Good work. _

_ Crux nodded. She left curtly after that. She had a report to fill out for Keema too, after all. They were all just hired thugs following after the money _ .

_ Reyes, on the other hand, stubbornly maintained a last stand. He drank what he could of his last fill of expensive whiskey. Though Keema’s people had already moved back in Draullir (and to their defense, Sara would no doubt argue that it always belonged to them; to which, she had a point, Reyes must admit; but he’s a greedy man) _ ,  _ they haven’t taken over Tartarus. It can be his own hell for now _ .

 

* * *

 

“I’m busy,” Reyes said curtly when she walked in after him.

He didn’t even give her the satisfaction of facing her. 

“How long are you going to stay mad at me?” But Sara was nothing if not persistent. She circled him, waiting for him to stop pivoting on his heel just to avoid her.

Seeing the desperation in her eyes tugged at his heart, more than a little. A part of him wanted to fess it up to her. He wasn’t mad, and if he was it wouldn’t be at her. He was… _temporarily embarrassed_ , if he had to use a term. It was a petty thing, and she wouldn’t understand.  

Yet there was an intimacy Reyes missed in the lack of understanding between them. It was in the way she tried - even if he pushed her away - to look him in the eye and make the attempt  _ anyway _ . Her feet squared on the floor, and her brows furrowed with that famous determination, he almost wished they weren’t having the spat they were having. For all the quirks he knew about her, Reyes sometimes forgot how much shorter she was (a whole head shorter!), and it surprised him that even in their most troubled times, Sara did her best (however unintentionally) to make him feel like the bigger person.

“I’m not mad at you.” He almost sighed out the confession. His fingers pinched the bridge of his nose, hoping to coax out the headache that so inconveniently plagued him.

Sara stayed silent. She was waiting to hear him out.

“There are …  _ things  _ I need to do.” The steely words met her flummoxed reaction. No doubt, she had a thing or two to say about her lack of involvement in all things related to Reyes, but he wouldn’t dare dream of luring her in. 

A criminal beggar; a petty thief. He didn’t  _ want  _ to have to rely on unsavory connections to stay afloat, much less embroil the Pathfinder into it all. So he made plans. It was precisely the sort of politically dicey thing that could upset the balance of it all, but Reyes was nothing if not a greedy man.

 

* * *

 

_ Scott: This… might be a good thing? _

_ Sara: How could you even say that?! _

_ She was hurt. The one person who was closest to her couldn’t even share a shed of understanding regarding her lovelorn problems.  _

_Scott: Listen, you know I support you and everything you do, but just_ think _about it for a second. You’ve been with this guy for years, and you’ve been in nothing but a stalemate!_  

_ Sara turned away from him, because that’s not exactly how she saw their relationship. _

_ Scott: I’m sure he cares for you - in his own way, but it might not be the way you need. _

_ Sara: What are you saying? _

_Scott: I’m saying if he breaks up with you, or if this break goes on longer than you want it to, maybe it’s time to just… face the music?_  

_ His confidence shrunk with every syllable. Who could blame him? He could already feel Sara’s menacing glower. _

_ Sara: This is my fault. _

_ Scott: No it’s not…  _

_ He shook his head in disbelief.  _

_ Scott: It’s about time he let go of Kadara. _

_ Sara: I should’ve told him… _

_ Scott: Does he tell  _ you _ everything? _

_ Something about the question left her at a loss for words. There was no rejoinder. Just a wordless resignation to the facts. When it came down to it, Scott was always for the bottomline. _

 

* * *

 

“Why won’t you let me help you?”

“Help me? Like how you handed everything that ever mattered to me to the Initiative on a silver platter?”

“...”

“I’m sorry.”

Sara tried  _ very  _ hard to keep her shoulders from trembling, to stop the swelling in her throat. 

“That was hardly fair. I know.” Reyes bit his lip the moment he said it. Wasn’t it _he_ who proclaimed that he never got anywhere playing fair? 

So to Sara, the question remained as to why he should treat her any differently.

“I’m not asking you to be fair.”

“Then what do you want from me?”

She wanted to say,  _ to understand you _ . She wanted to tell him it didn't matter if he did good things or bad things. The question of ethics in a relationship was academic. Love wasn't about those things. It was about simpler things, much more sordid, banal, and quaint things.

He made a move (a shift in his posture; the evasiveness of his gaze; they were all telltale signs), and so she motioned to stop him.

Watchful eyes seemed to whisper around them. The strobe lights were already causing a headache. 

Voyeurs who could only meddle. Connoisseurs who knew their mettle.

She held onto his hand.

"Can we talk somewhere else?"

Reyes looked elsewhere, not out of spite or more pointless evasion.

"Come, let's go to the room."


	8. "I love you without knowing how or why"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reyes and Sarianna make up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Explicit sex scene in this chapter.
> 
> Chapter title is inspired by a line from Pablo Neruda's Sonnet Xvii: "Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde" (I love you without knowing how or when or where)

Talking wasn’t always the best way to get to Reyes. It was the first rule Sara learned, one which didn’t take much getting used to.

She stood before a full length mirror and stared in earnest contemplation of what came before. How did they get there? The stresses of a month long break and an unnecessarily public argument showed themselves. A crease just in the corner of her eyes; an onset of visible pores stretched by fondly remembered laugh lines; a mole that might have been a birthmark, but she never noticed it before. Her lips were chapped, parched from a night unexpectedly spent elsewhere without much respite. 

“Going somewhere?”

He wasn’t really asking. With him, words were a pretext for other things. Like wrapping his arms around his lover’s waist, folding her ribs underneath his arms, and smoothing down the line running from her cheek to the nape of her neck with his lips. The language of limbs and touches.

The answer lay elsewhere for Sara; somewhere lost in the soft sliver of breath that slithered out from her barely parted lips. She wanted to know more beyond what came next, past the limits of his own anger and her own remorse. She wanted to know what lay in store before the hapless throes of passion and the pitfalls of shortsighted thinking.  

_We didn’t really talk_ , she wanted to say, but she bit her lip before the argument could begin. Things felt nice right then, and maybe - just _maybe_ \- they didn’t have to end it so soon.

But it was already early afternoon. Sara didn’t bring a change of clothes, much less a toothbrush, a brush, and other such prized possessions that made for proper hygiene. The low ceiling light hovered with a sterile pallor over her reflection. Seeing herself in his arms made her feel heavy, with bones too dense and skin too melted.

“We should get up.” It was her feeble protest that rolled out with jagged breaths. She tried to talk while he was busy nibbling on her neck.

Her tongue was an uncomfortably powdery mass in her mouth, warm as it was with the previous evening’s traces of liquor. And, for the moment, she stuck with Reyes’s loose hanging undershirt - a strategy to keep her one set of clothes from soaking in the sweat of an illicit tryst.

“We _are_ up.” 

Reyes stayed behind her. His hands found their way beneath the seams of the shirt as he followed the curve of her hips.

Sara felt his whole weight press against her back. The taut muscles of his chest, the firmness of his bones with the grip of his hands from underneath the loose fitting shirt… he was pushing her further against the mirror.

“I missed this, Sara.” He whispered into her ear with such softness. She was afraid she would never hear those words.

He was almost too shadowy in the reflection, too clouded over by the dark lines cast by her hair and by the flickering of the poorly powered light bulb. Not even Kadara’s star could throw an orange glow through the shutters. Sara tried to focus on his eyes as they gleamed in the mirror. The color brass, she always thought he had lovely eyes.

“Did you miss _me_?”

She treaded lightly, afraid to ask the wrong question. She wanted to ask it the night before, when they threw callous words around in reckless abandon; when incisive truths and pointed criticism rang harsher than they should. Talking would’ve exacerbated things, so they kissed then. The same anger that fueled his resentment laid the grounds for frail reconciliation. Could Sara the same for them now?

Reyes turned her around by her hip. Tired of the games, his features bore a heaviness that peered into her, pushing her back closer to the mirror until Sara gasped as the back of her thighs chilled against the cool glass.

With a sigh, his mouth dove for hers; for the firm flesh of her lower lip; for the warmth that was her tongue; drinking in her breaths until she seemed to plead for the very air he stole from her. And when Sara’s hands wrapped around his waist over to his back, her hands clinging to the ridges of his spine, he sallied lower and lower; past the nape of her neck, to the hard middle of her breasts as he unrolled the shirt from over her shoulders.

She knew he was done talking when he kneeled and lifted one of her legs, perching a thigh delicately over his shoulder.

Talking never worked, so Reyes dove for the next best thing.

First he planted a gentle kiss deep inside her thigh, where her skin grew dark and glowed with familiar warmth. Sara buckled over his face and reclined her back against the mirror. And when he didn’t relent; when she could feel his nose rub against her navel as his tongue lathed over her clit, she mewled his name into the incoherence of a breath. She could’ve sworn she was melding into the dark pool of their reflection. 

His amber eyes shone as he peered up at her, his mouth busy suckling into her middle as she tried to reach for the walls around her. The only support was the pressure of his head building up against her and the mirror that seemed to make her slide in her own sweat along the mired glass.

Her chest rose and fell in short rugged bursts. Lungs unable to grasp at the thickened air around them, Sara threw her head back with fluttering eyes. “Don’t leave me again,” she meant to whisper, but it came out more commanding than intended. And she knew Reyes heard her for his hold over the back of her thighs came to a bruising grip. She rolled her hips to ease into his touch and to relieve some of the ache that welled inside her.

“Please!” She struggled to comb through the truth before, but she figured there was nothing wrong with a hint of a confession. “Don’t leave me again.” Her furrowed brows, her closed eyes, and her o-parted lips beckoned for anything save a denial of her wants and needs as she lay them out before him.

And as if on cue, he rose from the floor, letting go of the precious flesh he so tenderly craved. A river of kisses streamed back up to where he started. 

“I won’t,” he said. His voice was coarse and rasped thin, as if he gave his all to the ministrations he had so sweetly offered. 

If Sara could open her eyes, she would say could see his smile; that lopsided curve of his lip that spoke of his tacit contentment and of a promise they could barely keep together. But instead, she felt it. She felt the glistening slickness on his lips as his nose caressed hers; the formerly roughened hold of his hands smoothed to a more sweeping caress over to her sides.

If Sara could, she would tell him that all she needed to hear were those two words. Not _‘I love you’_ or more of the kinds of promises neither of them could keep. 

“Don’t leave me,” she repeated. Her voice trembled in saying it, treading dangerously as withheld tears gave it a more frail timber.

“I won’t.”

If the previous night had been unforgivingly quick, then the day after was a reprise savored for each fleeting moment - the moments that were never meant to be repeated. She kept her eyes closed, clinging to the words he said in fanciful bursts of colors and sound in her head. Even if he didn’t mean them, they were all she needed.

And perhaps _that_ was what Reyes missed the most. Neither her nor the fulfillment of a potential he always gestured at, but the moment where he can back her against a hazy mirror, propping her up with barely a whimper, and lifting her thighs so they wove around his hips. It was that sort of secret where she gave up everything to him _sans_ conditions, _sans_ pretense. 

They fumbled about with a wall for a bed. She sat up against him, clinging with arms draped around his neck. She felt him swell between her thighs like searing heat. A soreness in her muscles beckoned for a repeat of the desires that always bundled them together; releasing all they repressed.

“Not here,” she said.

“Why not?”

He always talked back.

A low row of giggling burst unexpectedly. “You’ll break your mirror.”

Though Sara had in mind the actual bed, Reyes took his chances.

So she didn’t mind when he guided himself inside her, and he, without fail, buried his head against her chest. He always shared in the addicting soreness of collapsing limb upon limb.

“You never listen to me,” she joked with a chiding look in her eye. When he didn't answer, she let out a songlike moan, lost and stifled against the throbbing in his temples. It urged on his delicate rutting, adding a briskness to the pace that seemed to disturb the calm solidity of the walls behind them.

And with each thrust forward, Reyes pulled back in sultry, circular motions - taunting the way she clenched around him with each push and pull. It was a frustrating dance; a melange of sallies and ripostes lost in the translation of tender flesh. Even the mirror seemed to shake in protest of their thrashing. The small of her back stuck to it in his wall-shaking plunge. 

“Fuck me.”

Sara listened for the sound of his bones; the music of hinges creaking against their weight. She did anything and everything but focus on the stretching that she craved so. The length of him filling more of her - more than she needed before - gave heat to every part of her, and soon she no longer knew what life was like before. It was as if everything narrowed down to the breadth of time and space when he was inside of her. She wished they could stay like this. Reyes between her legs, pumping into her with all his wants and never a care for what she had to say.

They drowned out the white noise of the light bulb. The remnants of its waning voltage flickered as the sound of their rutting thudded against the walls of their little safe house. It was only early afternoon, and they seemed to just have started.

 

* * *

 

They were on the floor by early evening. Blankets were in a heap. Whispers of cotton and lycra bundled about on the dingy floorboards. 

Sara laid on her side parallel to Reyes, who spend an inordinate amount of time staring endlessly at her lithe figure.

“Where do we go from here?” 

He sighed, resigned to the inevitability that they always had to talk again. A groan rumbled through his lips before he shifted so that he lay flat on his back. The thousand-yard stare of his drifted off to the ceiling.

The light bulb was already out.

“I don’t know.” A familiar sadness swept over his expressions. Relaxed yet nonetheless heavy with the lines that grew more pronounced with age. “Where do you want to go?” 

With a smile, Sara held onto his hand. Her fingers wove around his, knotting them together weightlessly over his chest. “We don’t have to go anywhere.”

He turned to face her.

“I could be happy here if you stayed with me,” she continued. Sara did her best to let the sheen of her eyes say more than what she had said. Without telling him she loved him, she declared then and there what prompted the ill-fated decision to topple his empire and to later forgive him his misdirected frustrations. For all his lies and secrets, she knew he needed her more than he cared to admit and was willing to accept. If they needed to skirt around that - to endure more of his delusions of being someone he can never be - then so be it. 

Reyes smiled too, even if he knew that was nothing to live on. It would have to do, especially when he had nothing more to lose.


	9. "I met someone else"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sara meets a new friend

She met him at a dinner party where she danced with everyone. Well, some more than others.

“Pathfinder Ryder, I’d like for you to meet someone.”

He took her hand with delicate reverence. Afraid to be too firm when the lines of her palm still proved too smooth for an otherwise rugged life.

“This is Geoffrey Richards, our new head and director of our Residential Development project.”

Tann’s voice was like a the whining of a fly. It buzzed jarringly against the seamless backdrop of mellow dinner music. The slight hiss of cymbals, the thrumming vibrato of strings, and the whimsical air of a piano delighting in its own melody - an otherwise perfect atmosphere. 

“A pleasure to meet you.”

“The pleasure’s all mine,” he said with a smile.

So debonair.

Sara took him for the sort of man she always took great pains to avoid.

“So, Pathfi-...”

“You can call me Sara.”

That seemed to make Geoffrey laugh. 

“Sara,” he repeated with emphasis, “will you honor me with a dance?” He offered that familiar, gentlemanly bow. Hand outstretched. It reminded her of better times.

Between Tann’s watchful eyes and the ceaselessly cheerful racket of the other party guests, it was difficult to say no. So, Sara took his hand. This time with more feeling.

 

* * *

 

The night before, they had been dancing in the dark. It was her favorite thing to do with Reyes whenever the “last night” encroached on their happy, forgetful weekends together. 

“At least you’re getting in some practice,” he joked.

She laughed, her breath rolled in waves close to the nape of his neck.

By now they had achieved an effortless rhythm. Their bodies mirrored each other’s movements - the sway of their hips, the dainty circling of their feet, and the soft low breathing that marked each cadence with renewed and contented warmth. Dancing had become something of an embrace, as habitual and affectionate as any hapless kiss laid about in passing.

“True,” she said with an impish gleam in her eyes. “You’ve been so busy lately, I didn’t have a partner for it!”

Reyes threw his head to the side with a soundless chuckle. The glow of candlelight in one corner of the room added an orange glow to the lines of his face.

“Well it’s a good thing I’ve made the time, then. I would hate to get replaced.” 

The sentiment made her laugh some more. Sara couldn’t recall when she last saw him in such a delighted mood. It was magical enough, she thought, to be in his arms in a melodious free float across the darkened floor. So she didn’t bother asking _what_ had occupied him since they last saw each other, and whether that span of time had soothed the troubled waters of their relationship. She instead took to the complacency that kept the music playing and their dance going.

 

* * *

 

The guest of honor was a very capable dancer. 

Sara was used to slow, languorous movement that savored the full length of a beat. Geoffrey, however, was brisk and knew how to lead. He carried himself with the sort of brazenness that had its own alluring thrill.

“You must be proud,” he began. The music seemed to swell as he pressed closer than when he started. His hand on her waist settled more comfortably; his fingers wove into hers in a more tender grasp. “Everything here; the people, the food, the party…” His head bobbed in a suppressed chuckle, “... All of this is possible, I hear, because of you.”

She wondered how long it must have taken him to think up of that line. So she looked elsewhere, away from the attentive gaze he lowered onto her. It was difficult not to notice the wispy blues of his gray eyes. It was strikingly dull, especially compared to all the gold left aglow by the chandeliers.

“Whoever told you that doesn’t know what they’re talking about,” she replied disdainfully. All it took was one step, and she distanced herself in the most subtle of ways. “I’m just one person.”

The smirk on his face wanted to say otherwise. “I’m sure most people would disagree.”

“Doesn’t mean they’re not wrong.”

Her blithe parries brought about a different air from him. No longer cavalier yet still beaming with a certain air of confidence, Geoffrey nodded his head and looked at her with muted intrigue. They carried on, and the music only got louder.

 

* * *

 

“What is it for anyway?” 

She rested her head on his chest. His chin perched delicately atop the crown of her hair. She could feel his mouth graze for a hint of a kiss. There was a charm to that mindless uncertainty, one brought about by the comforts of never having to choose, never having to declare something so plainly obvious.

“It’s a work thing. Some inauguration for rich assholes that just got out of cryo.”

Sara rolled her eyes, already feeling the dread of having to brush shoulders with men who would never have known the simplicity of dancing in the dark, and the sacrifices they made to make it all possible.

“Good luck with that shitshow.”

Her ears perked up, alighted by an idea. “You can come with me. Be my plus one?” She dug up words lost in memory, and somehow extending to him the invitation he once offered her filled her with an inexplicable glee; a lighthearted vibrancy rang with the mere echo of it. 

But Reyes knew the question was rhetorical. There would be no invitation; there would be no dance. The so-called criminal type couldn’t always follow his heart’s desire. “I would love to,” he said with a surprising softness. Even Sara quirked her brow at the ways in which he suddenly intoned an uncharacteristic wistfulness about him. “But I’m too shy for that nonsense.” 

They both laughed some more. This time, he laid the kiss she had been anticipating. Like a whisper upon her brow.

 

* * *

 

“Where are you going?” he called out to her, a little hurt and confused by the way she so curtly exited the stage. 

Sara merely glanced over her shoulder. With a sigh, she pitied him a response. “The song is over.”

Geoffrey shot her an amused look. “Stay for the next one?” 

She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned on one side of her hip. He was tiresome, that much was true. Everyone got their turn dancing with the Pathfinder at the dinner party. He shouldn’t come running right back for seconds. “I need a drink,” she said in a hashed up excuse.

“Let me get you one.” With that he disappeared into the crowd.

 

* * *

 

“And what will you be wearing?”

His hand followed hers as it hovered in the air, outstretched against the dim lighting of the ceiling. It was easy to confuse it for the sky itself the way they lay, flat on their backs on the cool, cement floor. They stared above it like a black dome sheltering a raiment of stars. Outlines of their arms were mere anomalies casting shadows where color should be. 

Sara tilted her head in earnest contemplation. “I’m not sure yet.”

Reyes kept a fixed gaze on the contrived scenery before them. “I _really_ like the red dress you wore last time. It was…-” he paused as if carefully mulling over a possible justification, “-... _really_ nice.”

She nudged an elbow into his rib with a chiding roll of her eyes. “Stop talking,” she commanded with a playful groan. Had she been less experienced in these things, she would have blushed. Instead, she felt a sort of stomach-rolling embarrassment in the way he showed his… affection. But the hint of annoyance veiled something else entirely. Sara hadn’t realized, much to her flattered surprise, that he remembered the little things she did for him. 

“What?” he asked defensively. He was one word away from another small burst of quiet laughter. “I’m just saying I liked it, and I would like to see it again.”

Reyes half sat up on his elbow and turned to her. Sitting there in the dark, he could feel her breathe. Even if her figure was a mere indentation against the waning light, it was enough that he could feel the hints and signs of her life as it were - intimate and bare to the smallest of details.

“That’s _your_ fault,” she said with another playful shove. This time it was her hand that pressed against his bare chest. “You didn’t let me wear it for long.”

To that he had no response save an agreeable shrug of his shoulder. Indeed, clothes don’t stay on for very long whenever Sara and Reyes found themselves alone in the same room. With almost childish frivolity, they scraped for any and every excuse to devolve into the play of it all. Never mind the rules.

 

* * *

 

“With peace established in the cluster, where does the Pathfinder’s work take her?”

She snorted just as she raised the glass to her lips. The taste of wine was always bitter to Sara, but that night it at least flowed like honey. 

They were already a bottle of wine in, standing by the balcony with precarious abandon. The cloudy sky shone in streaks of silver against the pitch black drop of dark space. Meridian was always beautiful, Sara thought, at this time of night.

She could tell Geoffrey was a bit more loose, infinitely more vacuous with his exaggerated phrases. The live music still rang in a muted din behind them.

“Peace doesn’t mean there aren’t remaining Kett! Or… _hic -_ ” The hiccup interrupted their banter and provoked a guffaw from her friend. “... or that there aren’t any vaults and remnant… and _Pirates_ \- _hic_ \- left to deal with!” She was quick to quell his protests and reservations, pointing a histrionic finger at him as if he was a misbehaving and tactless student. “There’s plenty to do!”

Her fingers struggled to grip the neck of her wine glass. A swill of it threatened to spill with each brusque movement she made.

Geoffrey’s ribs shook from the boisterous laughter. He was almost out of breath and red with the rush of exciting company.

“There’s always something to do…”

A more plaintive tune seemed to overtake the mirth. Even then, his laughter seemed to taper off, acquiescing to the somber timbre of her candor.

 

* * *

 

“Where are you going?”

Reyes stood by the edge of the bed with a start. Sara remained in a barely waking state, sprawled as she lay on the bed from a recently disturbed dream.

“I just got a call. I have to take it,” he answered. 

Had she been less sleepy, Sara would have put up more of a fight. She would have looked away with a disgruntled scrunch of her nose or scratched an imagined itch on her elbow. She would have feigned indifference all the while letting out an irritated sigh before succumbing to the more explicit pleas that he should stay and never leave her. 

But her eyes were still droopy, and her head was wholly incapable of leaving the soft comforts of the cotton sheets that stuck to the bare crevices and nooks of her skin. Besides, Reyes was already dressed and ready to go, more eager than ever to renew much of what they had lost in the skirmishes of their past. What more could she do to convince him to stay? 

“It’s okay,” she said with a protracted yawn. “There’s always something to do.” With that she rolled to her other side, turning her back so she lay huddled. It wouldn’t do let him see her disappointment.

Reyes combed a gloved hand through her hair, drawing it back before her ears. “I’ll see you when you’re back,” he declared. He left a kiss on her temple shortly before the sound of a door slammed closed in the echoless room.

 

* * *

 

The car door slowly hissed to a close as Sara fumbled in. 

Gil looked at her with a mischievous grin. “You’re drunk!”

“I am not!” The adamant protest proved less convincing, however, when her reddened faced match the hue of her dress. She hurriedly grabbed the seat belt before letting the band glide over her. It took several tries for the buckle to properly click. 

“Uh… huh.” The cheery engineer leered at her with thinly veiled suspicion. “So who was that guy anyway?”

“Who uh… what guy?” Her eyes remained on the windshield, waiting for the scenery to move only to realize that Gil hadn’t even started the engine.

“Oh, I don’t know! The prince charming look alike who opened the door for you and wished you ‘a very good night’?” He rolled his eyes in exaggerated emphasis over the quoted phrase.

Sara felt the prickle of needles on her skin. “Just some random guy! I don’t know! Can we go home?!” She slumped over her seat, pinching the bridge of her nose for a performed headache. “I’m _really_ tired.”

Gil didn’t bother answering with some witty jab. In truth, it was no fun bantering with a drunk who barely had the faculties to appreciate the finesse with which he delivered his snark. So instead he laughed quietly to himself, impatiently hoping for a chance to tease her about the mysterious, darkly handsome guy that got their formidable Pathfinder so incredibly flustered. Until then, he did what he was told and ran the engine. It wouldn’t be long before they were back on the Tempest.

As for Sara, she took his offered armistice with tacit relief. Free of the burden of explanation, she contented herself with staring down at the sight of Hyperion disappearing off to the ocean of lights, garrulously bright against the dark, sleeping horizon.

“I had a good time, I think,” she remarked absentmindedly. Her eyes were lost to the stars beneath her, contemplating the blur of images strung with heady excitement as they were committed to her memory.

“I’m glad.” Gil kept his focus on the wheel, but there was no denying the hint of contentment he shared with his friend.

Sara smiled to herself before nodding off. The last thing she remembered was the droning hum of an engine, vibrating in low tones against her ear.

 

* * *

 

The next day Sara made a call.

“It was fun,” she said. Weariness followed the tones of her brief description of the party. “I’m a little hungover though.”

“You mean you got _drunk_ at the party?!” Reyes play-acted his surprise before letting the shock dissipate into a series chiding clicks of his tongue. “Without me? Sara, I’m disappointed.”

She sat over her terminal in her room, mechanically scrolling through the interface screen as she thought of something to say. Out of the barrage of insincere thank yours and fanmail, however, one stuck out like a sore thumb.

“Sara? You still there?”

She jumped, forgetting for a moment that there had been someone else on the line besides the static of white noise. “Sorry! I just … um yeah.” Her eyes stayed fixed on an email stuck with a flag that deemed it hitherto unread. “Listen, can I call you back? Something came up.”

“Don’t make me wait too long.”

“Likewise,” she said with a suddenly cheery smile. 

And with those words the vidcom channel thrummed to a dead line. Without skipping a beat, her forefinger clicked the email open.

 

_To: Sarianna Ryder_

_From: Geoffrey Richards_

_Subject: I had a nice evening_

_I hope this isn’t too forward (if it is, let me know). Tann gave me your email, so I just thought I’d say hi and thank you for the pleasant evening. With luck, the wine didn’t hit you too hard._

_As you know, I’m a little new to Andromeda and in want of friends. It would be good to see a familiar face every once in awhile. I’m stationed at Nexus Operations if you ever want to drop by for a friendly chat._

_Yours,_

_Geoff_

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Please leave a review for constructive feedback! Or stop by to say hi, either way :)
> 
> My new tumblr side blog dedicated to MEA and Reyes is www.pathfindersemail.tumblr.com


End file.
